


Mr Grieves And The Vengeance Girl

by Herself_nyc



Series: Bittersweets [18]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bodyswap, F/M, Sequel, Time Travel, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-07
Updated: 2014-09-07
Packaged: 2018-02-16 10:52:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2267019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herself_nyc/pseuds/Herself_nyc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A story in the Bittersweets-verse that was never completed.  </p><p>Set after <i>Where They Have To Take You In</i>, and continuing the story of William Grieves (aka Spike), following <i>Mrs Grieves & The Abandoned Husband</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mr Grieves And The Vengeance Girl

**Author's Note:**

> This unfinished story is a direct offshoot of the events in two previous stories in the Bittersweets series. [Mrs Grieves & The Abandoned Husband](Husband.html), and [Where They Have To Take You In](where1.html). 
> 
> Thanks: to the Deadly Hook, who not only commented and brainstormed during the writing process, but suggested some key points.

He was horribly sick overnight on the channel crossing. Disembarking at Dover in the dark and rain before dawn, it was hard to distinguish land from water. The floor in the customs shed seemed to dip and roll beneath his feet. The gas flares made his head ache. Waiting his turn, he shaded his eyes with one hand, staring at the ground as he tried to master his heaving stomach. 

The trunks were an anxiety, he had so many. He didn't quite know why he'd brought all his wife's things away with him. She was gone, never to return; he should have dispersed her clothes and her few jewels among the servants. Instead he'd caused Kate to pack them as carefully as if her mistress was watching over her shoulder. 

Kate had been dismissed--gone back to England, or so he'd believed--three months before Buffy's ... death. But a week ago she'd appeared at the villa door, humble and nervous and moist-eyed, conveying condolences. She had not gone home, she had found a new situation with another English family in the town, but she found it did not suit, and she wished to return to London. Would sir be so kind as to allow her to travel under his protection? It was such a long way to go on her own. And she would make herself useful. She'd heard all about the sad tragedy and sir's plans to decamp. 

He couldn't of course be surprised at this reminder that his business was known and discussed among the inmates of the neighborhood's small expatriate colony. It was a nuisance, but it didn't trouble him so much. He was far more disturbed by Kate herself. 

Kate knew the truth about his wife, Kate had been in Buffy's confidence when he was not. Kate might perhaps suspect that the official story given out--that the late Mrs Grieves and her stillborn baby would be transported back to England for burial--was just that, an official story. Perhaps she hoped to make something of her secret knowledge, by presenting herself again on his doorstep. He should've cut her off, left her in Italy with the cursed fripperies of his faithless wife, but because he couldn't be entirely sure of what she knew or believed, he felt he must keep her near. 

It was unlikely that anyone would believe her, if she told on him. But if she tried to tell, about the missing wife and the missing infant, some unpleasantness could ensue--perhaps the officials would try to inspect the sealed coffin that was supposed to contain the remains of wife and son, and which was filled instead with a hundred and twenty pounds of good Italian soil. 

She'd shown no sign yet of a yen for blackmail, but a lady's maid in work would be far less susceptible to such temptations than one turned loose, so he went on with it, intending that she would serve his mother, who never yet had had such a servant, but ought to want one now that he was going to remove her to a better sphere of life. 

He didn't trust Kate to manage the baggage, though. It wasn't until they were on the far side of the barrier, the trunks well chalked, the coffin too, that he united her with the laden porter and handed her a third-class ticket. The atmosphere in the train shed was nearly as thick as Kate's mourning veil. She might've been anyone as she took the bit of pasteboard in her gloved fingers with a half-bobbed curtsey. 

She might've been a demon. Now he knew of their existence, he was sure he saw them everywhere. All of the dark figures scurrying around the belching train might've been unclean creatures, festering out of the damp laden air and the dark, the way the ancients believed that maggots were engendered by rotting flesh. 

He couldn't believe anymore that things were what they seemed. Not after being dragged across space and time, forced to confront perfidy and deceit. The world he'd seen, _her_ world, horrified him. He could not fathom such a future. Yet after being returned to his own place and time, he felt at ease nowhere. 

Finding a seat in a second class compartment, he settled back with a sigh. How different was this from the outward journey! Bringing his pretty bride away from London, speeding away, as he'd believed then, from ill health and loneliness and desolation, how hopeful he'd been--nearly giddy! They'd come down in an evening train, stealing kisses between the snores of the old lady with whom they had to share the compartment. Had their wedding night in an inn far from the best, but whose discomforts paled beside their rapture with each other. Not the first time he possessed her, true, but the first time since the transformative epiphany had laid the hand of innocence on his heart. Taking her in his arms that night in the hotel bed, he'd whispered, "My darling, we are virgins to each other, coming together for the first time in true love and with the blessing of the Lord." She'd laughed a little at that, but he hadn't heard anything wrong in her mirth. Had as yet no idea that she had a taint far more monstrous than that of the doxy she'd been, a failing for which he'd heartily forgiven her. 

She'd made no sign then that there was ever anyone she cared for, besides him. He had only to close his own eyes to see hers again, bright and overflowing in the flickering candlelight, fixed on his as they rocked together. She'd given him all he wanted--more than he knew he wanted. 

There never was such bliss. It transcended even the finest poetry. They'd sailed for Calais in the morning sunshine, a crossing placid as a paddle round a pond. She was, after her illness, ethereally pale, delicate and lovely in her hat lined in pink to make her cheeks less wan. She'd clung to his arm, looking up into his face with such an expression of warmth and happiness. He'd imagined all of life would be like that, with her on his arm. 

That was his chief talent, the talent for self-deception. He was nothing but a born fool. Weak-minded. Pathetic. 

He thought of the vampire, that loathesome creature who was and was not himself. How disgusted _he_ was at their confrontation. And though William had tried to tell himself, over and over, that it was only the disgust of an unclean thing for one that was pure and righteous, he suspected in his heart that the monster's hatred for him was specific, the disdain of a real man for the mewling boy he once had been. This sickened him, but he couldn't dismiss the idea. They'd all believed it, all of Buffy's circle. None of them had taken his part, though he was demonstrably in the right. And though he did not care a jot for the opinion of such a ragbag gathering of immoral freaks and Jewesses, yet he could not stop thinking about them, and of the vampire in particular. He could not stop remembering his wife, and wanting her desperately. It seemed he thought of her not just with his mind, but that his bones and flesh and sinews carried out the craving as well, and his member virilis. He could not rest for wanting her. The unwelcome knowledge of what she was, of her powers and appetites, only increased his desire. 

She _was_ his wife. And the children were his. He'd been robbed of them. And though they were now infinitely far away in time, though he'd surrendered the infant boy--oh, his _son!_ \--of his own free will, he could focus on nothing else. 

He rested his head against the cloudy window glass. Nausea had given way to fatigue, but he couldn't imagine sleeping. Possibly never again. 

The train shuddered, whistling and jerking, and began to move. Bearing William Grieves, the grieving widower, back to the city of his original despiar.  
  
  
  
  


~~~

"Soon it'll be a year since Johnny died." 

The sisters were tucked up together on the sofa, nursing their infants, in Buffy's suite at the Hyperion, where, a couple of months after her daughter's birth, she and Spike still stayed. When Buffy spoke, Dawn glanced up sharply. 

"The anniversary. God, I hadn't thought of that. We should all get together and acknowledge that, right? I can get in touch with everybody, and arrange--" 

"I guess. But listen, Dawnie." 

"I'm listening. Of course I'm listening." Dawn's voice was gentle in a way that made Buffy wince a little. She hated to realize that her baby sister was "handling" her. 

"I keep having this dream." 

"What dream? A slayer dream?" 

"No, an anxious new mom dream. Which, believe me, is way worse. Last night was the third time I had this dream since Kitten came." 

They'd called the new child Hope Augusta Summers, in honor of the resurgent circumstance of her birth, and of Spike's mother, without considering that the diminutives would all be ungainly; within a few days of her birth Spike began referring to his new daughter as Kitten, and soon they were all calling her that, or Kitty, or Kitlet. It suited her; she was already very girly, and Spike claimed to know already what she'd be like later on-- _a perfect kitten she'll be, all mane an' big eyes an' pretty little mouth._

"So what is it?" Dawn asked. 

"The dream is so stupidly _obvious_ that afterwards I just wanna thump myself because my subconscious is supposed to be more crafty than that." 

"Okay, so describe it to me!" 

Buffy gathered Kitten a little closer, needing to feel the infant's warmth, her pulse. "It goes back to when Johnny was a baby. And I gave him up to his father. His real father." 

Buffy glanced up at her sister, to see how this would be received. She felt skittish, talking about any of this, but couldn't hold it in any more. Dawn shook her head. "He wasn't really--" 

"He _was._ You forget, I was _with him._ For Johnny, I was with him for a long time. We were married." 

"Okay. Yes. So, the dream." 

"In the dream William takes the kid, and he goes--there isn't any magic circle in the dream or anything, I'm not even sure where it's happening. But he doesn't change his mind, he doesn't give him back, and as soon as the baby's out of my arms I know I Have Made a Huge Mistake, and I take off after him. There's a lot of running around, it's all very dark and like at any moment I'm gonna run off a huge cliff and plunge to my death. But that isn't the terrible part." 

"Sweetie ...." 

"The terrible part is that the whole time I'm careening off after Johnny, Kitten has been left all alone. Not just all alone, she's just forgotten, like no one knew she'd been born, that she was there. I can't explain it, but you know how you know things in dreams. And when I finally finally _finally_ notice her screaming--which I've been hearing and ignoring all the time I'm stumbling around trying to find my son--when I go to her--sans Johnny who is gone because I just _gave him away_ \--I find she's ... she's _blue,_ and she isn't ...." 

"Buffy, Kitten is _fine._ Look at her, she's gorgeous." 

"I know it's only a dream. I know it's all me. I keep thinking about Johnny, I can't even describe these thoughts, it's like there's a deck of cards in my head that's being endlessly shuffled and dealt and shuffled and dealt. I can't make it _stop._ Because I didn't do right by him. First I wronged his father and then I wronged him." 

"C'mon, that's just not true! Buffy, don't dwell on all that stuff. Not anymore. Not at all." 

Buffy shook her head. "I keep thinking how we wouldn't even have this beautiful new daughter, if Johnny was still alive. I mean, we wouldn't, right? She's a gift from the Powers I can barely comprehend." 

"Right, which means she's yours and Spike's. William had nothing to do with making this one. So why fret about the past? All the time Kitlet was baking you never said--" 

"I tried not to talk about it. My worries. They weren't so bad during the pregnancy, or right afterwards. But lately I look at her and my heart just _cracks_ when I think about what her life might be, with us for parents." 

"A couple months old and already she's destined for grand tragedy? Buffy, c'mon. What does Spike say about all this?" 

"We ... we don't talk about it that much. Because I know he's kind of obsessy about it too, and if we talked about it all the time it would get to be all there was." 

"Uh, I think it's the opposite. You keep it pent up, it gets as big as the Ritz." Dawn shifted closer, so their shoulders touched. "Look, it's normal that you're both still mourning about Johnny. That takes as long as it takes, we know that. And the anniversary sucks--remember the first anniversary after we lost Mom? But your dream ... really, I wouldn't get hung up on it. I could tell you some doozy dreams _I've_ had about Giles. Xander too. We regularly wake up screaming." 

Buffy smiled a little. "You do not." 

"We do. Ask Xander. There's frequent screaming, and it's not all Giles. Though he is a hungry and imperious little guy."  
  
  
  


"Dunno that I want to go in for any more funeralizing," Spike said a few weeks later when Buffy mentioned the anniversary. "Had plenty at the time, traveling steerage on the all rat diet. An' so did you, I reckon. Doesn't seem that far off to me, alas. Still feel him every day." 

"Me too." She felt Johnny now, not exactly a presence, but something shadowy and just-out-reach that intruded on the edges of all her present satisfaction. 

"I know it, pet. What if we take off up the coast somewhere for a few days instead, just you an' me? Remember our boy together privately, in our own way." 

"What is our own way? Getting drunk and fucking?" 

"But somewhere a bit posh. An' on good wine, 'stead of JD, if you fancy it." 

Tears came to her eyes, but she couldn't help laughing. "That's _your_ way, mister. Your way for everything--mourning, celebrating, or just passing the time." 

"I've found it usually answers," Spike said, in tones of mock affront. Then he winked at her, and she giggled again. 

They were sprawled in their bed, the baby lying on his chest. 

"I'd have to pump a lot in advance if we left Kitten behind. And bring the pump with. I dunno how schnockered I can get anyway. It all goes into the milk. So we might as well bring her." 

"Except the pump doesn't start howling, just when we're gettin' some meaningful conversation going, or a bit of kip." 

"You really think we'll have some meaningful conversation?" 

"Have a feelin' that's what you're wanting. Can talk about anything' you've a hankering to say, Slayer." 

This roused her suspicion. "Don't pretend you're all Mr Mental Health yourself. What about what _you_ need to say?" 

He dipped his gaze, looking at the baby's head, following it with his fingers, gently tracing through the thin fawn-colored curls. "Reckon there'll be something, when it comes right down to it." 

Spike went on caressing the baby's head, and didn't breathe for a long time, until at last, as if sensing she was waiting for it, he inhaled, his chest rising like a swell beneath Kitty's face and form, and let go in a long sigh. The baby didn't stir from her snooze. 

A frisson of unease made her tingle. She shifted closer to him. "We'll be all right, won't we?" she murmured. "We'll do all right, I mean." She watched him, the subtle expressions that flickered on his lips and eyelids and in the twitch of his cheek. He'd suffered so much--they both had--in the last year. Sufferings they'd thoroughly aired, and, she was sure, transcended. What remained was foolish worry, which shouldn't, despite Dawn's council, be emboldened and puffed up by too much attention. Johnny was gone, and it was no disservice to his memory to resist the impulse to make an idol of remorse out of him. 

He fixed his gaze on hers, and she thought she saw the same misgiving that dogged her. It was almost a comfort, to see that Spike wasn't impervious either, even as she wanted him to sweep that constantly shuffling pack of cards out of her head. 

"Sweet, I know we will." 

Buffy stretched a hand out to touch his face. It was one of those moments when she wished she could crawl inside him, _be_ him, because he was always valiant about their love, he was always certain about them. "How do you know, Spike?" 

"Know it because the Powers wouldn't have given us this little bit to look after, if we weren't meant to get on. It's that simple, isn't it?" 

"Is it?" 

"Know it in my soul." 

"You wouldn't even have a soul, if--" 

"Know I'm better for it, yeah?" He smiled. "Better husband for the great slayer now, ain't I?" 

Spike rose and carried the sleeping baby to the suite's far room. Buffy slipped out of her clothes, and sat on the side of the bed, watching him through the doorway as he settled their child in her crib. There was so much resonance of that sight of him, his bare white back glowing in the lamplight as he bent over the crib rail, it took her back and back, to that first improbable time, when Jemima was born after all her vacillation and fear, and Spike had responded with aspects of himself that neither of them had anticipated. Such extraordinary change. 

He approached her now in his soft loping stride. She reached out and pulled him close by his belt loops, pressed a kiss on his belly, rubbing her cheek against the muscles. His skin was smooth and cool, and made her feel how heated her own face was. He was aware of it too, his hands cradling her jaw, fingers tracing the outline of her neck as she undid his flies. "Better doesn't enter into it. You are my _only_ husband," she said, drawing him out. "The only one I ever wanted or ever will, Mr Grieves." 

He chuckled, and shifted closer to her, offering himself to her kisses and hands, until she took his cock between her lips. 

"That's it, love," he whispered. "Suck me off, that's brilliant, that is. Yeah. Fuck, yeah." 

She enjoyed her mastery of him, his smutty worshipful babble, the way his legs trembled, one knee twitching each time her tongue concentrated on one particular place, the tickle of his pubic hair against her face. His hands passed and repassed through her hair, sometimes pausing to hold her entire head, but always gently. How many thousands of times had they done this, and yet even now there was a rush of surprise in finding herself going down on Spike, as if some path that should certainly have pointed one way forever had instead imperceptibly veered. And then her memory skipped back again, even farther, to the first time she'd seen him, materializing out of the darkness, clapping his hands and _looking_ at her with such intensity, such knowingness and certainty that she'd felt--not frightened, not repulsed, not even fascinated--but _piqued_. It was easy, from her current perspective, to think back and be sure that she'd known at once that he would be important to her, but she knew that wasn't really the case. She'd experienced him mostly as a dangerous nuisance, and yet, and yet. She did believe there was some intimation in that first encounter that there was a potential between them for something bigger than the game of cat and mouse he'd embarked on. Yet that encounter planted a germ beneath her skin, that all unsuspected, grew in tiny increments until it became part of herself. Spike liked to say that night was when he'd unknowingly slipped his head into the noose. _My happy-go-lucky existence was over from that moment,_ he'd tease. _You ruined it. You slayed me, Buffy._  
  
  
  
  


~~~

Had he not already suspected it, then the attendance at the funeral of his wife and son confirmed for him that he was not the same Mr Grieves as before, in the eyes of the London society he'd left behind. Now he was a public man, the coming writer of whom so much more success was expected. Gentlemen came to pay their respects in the church and at the gravesite. Ladies paid condolence calls on his mother in the house he'd taken for them on a fashionable square in the West End, and brought their eligible daughters in sober but becoming bonnets. When he walked in the park, he was greeted familiarly at every turn. Invitations arrived. Hostesses seated him at dinner beside attractive ladies. 

And when he first met her eyes at an evening party, Miss Cecily Addams, still unmarried though she was getting on, surely, for twenty-six or even -seven, colored and raised her fan. 

Nothing was what it had been before. 

There were, if not pleasures, satisfactions to all this. Undeniably. 

But none of it quelled his urges, or stilled his dreams. 

Often he dreamed of the dark-haired female monster, whose big eyes seemed to swim in her pale face. The one who had spoken to him so strangely, and yet as if she understood things about him he'd only ever articulated to himself. She'd tried to claim him, to make him into what she was. Buffy had rescued him from that fate, and thus begun all his heartbreak. 

Why had she done it? If his wife instead loved the vampire ... 

Foolish question! Hadn't she admitted it herself? Victimized by some magical attack that put her out of her rightful time, she'd needed him, to save her from a return to the despair of the streets. That was the only reason for all her seeming kindness and affection. Self-preservation. How bitter that knowledge was! He'd believed so firmly in love, in the communion of souls, even when he'd been sure that ill health and ill luck would prevent him from ever knowing such joys. Buffy Summers had come to him as if delivered by Providence. Now he wondered if everything between men and women wasn't all a lie. How was he to know that any lady loved any gentleman? Ladies must be married, because to be left on the shelf was wretched. Probably that was all they thought of as they angled for husbands; love didn't come into it. How could it? Who among them could afford to be high-minded? 

He turned all this over in his mind every day, where it fed his newfound obsession with Buffy's world. What were demons, where were they? What gave Buffy her power? Where had the magic come from, that sent her to him, that brought her back? If he could find out who wielded that magic in the here and now, perhaps he could obtain a second chance. Reclaim what was his.  
  
  
  


The search took him all over London, and out into the countryside. He was passed, during the course of weeks of quiet enquiry, hand-to-hand, from one dealer in occult books to another, who sent him to the dabbler in love potions, who gave him an introduction to a scholarly old man in Shropshire, steeped in dust, who, after a couple of cajoling, flattering visits and the receipt of some cases of good wine William sent from Wapping, disclosed the address of another, older, dustier, who claimed to be a demonologist. Surprising, how easily the doors of this obscure milieu opened to him, after a little initial resistance. 

But not surprising, ultimately, how little any of these self-styled experts really knew. It was all just a wild goose chase. 

Nothing material came of any of it, and as the season was winding down, people beginning to talk of country house visits and shooting, he felt he must give up. Unless he wanted to walk out in the night in the low places murderers lurked, hoping to meet with a vampire that way, there was nothing else to do. And he didn't want to be killed by a vampire, or to become one. 

What was surprising--indeed, entirely unanticipated--was the direction from which the real assistance finally came. 

At one of Lady Rivers' evening crushes, the glittering rooms full to overflowing with the _bon ton,_ William, in the quest for fresh air, escaped into the garden. Having just seen a couple depart from a secluded bower, he'd imagined it would be empty, and stepped in for a few moments to himself. 

Miss Cecily Addams was sitting there. 

"Pardon me," he muttered, making to withdraw. But she gestured him closer with her fan. 

"I would not again like to impose upon you." He didn't exactly mean this. He thought he might want to have further conversation with her, but on his own time-table, and with ample preparation. She was fresh and lovely as ever, yet the feelings he'd had for her were so dashed he could barely recall them. They had been replaced, though, since his return to London, by others, calm and speculative. It might be altogether more pleasureable to have Miss Addams as his own now that he didn't love her anymore. Sitting at his table, presiding over his house, and obliging him in his bed, she would always have to think of how she'd received him initially, and how, with the passage of time, their respective positions had shifted. Certainly now she wasn't in such a strong position to reject suitors. What suitors did she have? Having made various discreet inquiries, he couldn't learn of any serious, appropriate comers. She was in real danger of being left on the shelf. Which would be far more publically belittling to her than to make a timely marriage to the eligible gentleman of the moment, but were he to have her in his power, she would feel that far more and far longer, however high she might hold her head up in the world as the second Mrs Grieves. He would want her to hold up that lovely head in public, while she bent the neck at home. He'd been taught how women must be dealt with, and meant to profit by the hard lessons. 

It might after all be possible to ask her again, and to be, this time, accepted. 

But not this evening. 

Sketching her a little bow, he made to withdraw, but before he could step aside, she tapped his arm imperiously with her fan. "Don't be an ass. Sit down." 

Her tone, her vocabulary, surprised him. The bench was small, most of it taken up with the folds of her dress, which she made no move to rearrange. He leaned instead against one of the wooden uprights, and regarded her. What was she playing at? 

She said, "You've changed quite a bit since last we used to meet in society." 

"Perhaps I have. _You_ have not. You remain just as charming as--" 

A dismissive wave of the fan. "You've suffered a great loss. You lost your infant, and your wife, at one stroke." 

"Yes." He didn't like to hear it so baldly stated. 

"What's more, you carry yourself like a gentleman laboring under an injustice. I find that interesting." 

This was alarming. "I don't know what you mean." Coming from a marriagable young lady, this topic was ... he didn't know what it was. Strange. Offensive. What on earth was she getting at? "If you will pardon me--" 

"William Grieves. Robbed of wife and family through no fault of your own. And such an interesting wife, too. An unusual lady, wasn't she, the late Mrs Grieves?" 

"I do not know what you can mean. She was my wife and of course I love her and miss her." 

"Of course. We both know what a lover you are." 

He couldn't quite believe these words could escape the lips of a lady like Cecily, but before he could protest she went on. "How you must wish--" 

"Wish! You don't know what I wish! I would prefer, Miss Addams, that you not speak of it!" 

"If you won't speak of it, I can't help you. If you _will,_ you may be quite amazed at what I can do." 

" _You_? You can do nothing. No one can. I am bereft." 

"Indeed you are. Your poor little children, removed from your protection ... and what is worse, knowing they live under the so-called protection of a bloodthirsty monster. Whom your wife loves as she never really loved you." 

At this, he did step back. How could she _know_? He'd spoken to no one about the vampire, the other child, none of it--not even Kate knew those details. 

Cecily shrugged. "A displacement in space-time like that? Believe me, we were _all_ aware of it." 

"We? Of whom do you speak?" 

"It's against the rules, even for slayers, but apparently she and her people are _special._ " Miss Addams gestured again with the fan, her nose wrinkled with disdain. "They will get away with absolute murder. It really isn't right." 

"I know it," he said, morosely. "It _was_ the most grave injustice, and I wish--" 

"Yes? What?" Miss Addams was on her feet now, standing so close to him that her skirt was positively crushed against his trousers-front. In the dappled dark he could barely see her face, but the jewel on her necklace drew his eye, as it glimmered and winked. 

"Wicked as she is, how I miss her! My little wife! And my dear children! She has robbed me of my own children, forever!" 

"Well?" He could smell the posy of fresh flowers pinned to her bodice. The aroma brought home to him with a fresh blow how he'd been deprived of all that was sweet in life. How empty everything was--his hands, his home, his _self._

"Well, it is a terrible thing to bear! But I must bear it." 

"But isn't it unbearable! I don't like knowing that children, especially, should be deprived! What do you wish for them, William? For them and for yourself?" 

Overcome by amazement at the passion in her tone, he groaned. "What do I wish? What would any sane man wish? Of course I want my children, and my wife! I wish _I_ could be he whom she honors and desires and loves above all else!"  
  
  
  


~~~

The oncoming hi-beams were in the wrong place, speeding right at them. Buffy grabbed the wheel, yanking it towards her. The car swerved, and the lights were gone. "Spike! What are you doing? You almost plowed into the opposite lane!" 

He didn't answer. His knuckles were bright white where he squeezed the wheel. 

"Spike--could you slow down? Pull over, okay?" 

"I--I don't know--yes. All right." 

When they were parked on the shoulder, Buffy released her seatbelt and leaned forward to see him. Spike stared straight ahead, still gripping the wheel. 

" _What?_ " 

He blinked, shook his head, and finally turned to her, eyes wide. "I--" 

"Are you okay? What happened just now?" 

He shook himself, peeled his hands from the wheel, popped the seatbelt, and got out of the car. Buffy got out too, and opened the back to check on Kitten. She was still asleep--car rides always put her right out. She'd be up wanting the breast soon enough, so Buffy left her in the car seat, and went around to where Spike was standing on the gravel at the edge of the highway, looking out beyond the curved guardrail to the Pacific glittering below in the moonlight. When she slid a hand up his back he shivered, then leaned in to her touch, and slipped an arm around her. 

"Spike?" 

He pulled her suddenly tight against him, tipping her face up, covering her mouth with his. The way he kissed her made her think that if he had a heartbeat, it would be hammering now. When she started to break it, he renewed the kiss with a startling fervor. She gave in, listening out for any sound from the baby even as she slipped her arms around his neck and went up on tiptoe. As he kept her grappled to him with one arm, the other hand traveled; he gave one of her breasts a sharp squeeze, and when she squeaked, his hand went to her skirt, fluttering in the smart breeze, and drew it up her thigh. 

She pulled his hand away. "Hey, c'mon. We'll be there in an hour. Can't you wait?" 

"An hour?" 

"If we get going again." 

He glanced at the ocean, and then back at her, his lips parted as if a question hovered there. 

"Are you hungry? The thermos is in the glove compartment--have a drink before we start." 

"I hardly think that would be the--that is--yeah. Guess I could use a steadyin' drink." 

"Spike, what's the matter? Is there something about this place, or--?" 

He was staring out to sea again, the wind stirring one loose curl over his forehead, his body a strung bow. He took a deep scenting breath, held it for a long time, eyes narrowing, as if he was sifting every component of the wind, then let it out and smiled. When he turned back to her, he looked pleased, his smile a little wolfish, so she briefly considered pulling her skirt up for him after all. "Right as rain now, Slayer. Didn't mean to scare you." 

"Did you doze off before? Or were you--" 

"Somethin' startled me, that's all. Dunno what. But it's all right now. We can get on." 

"I could drive the rest of the way to the B&B. That way you can have your drink while we go." 

He opened the glove compartment as she pulled out, unscrewing the lid of the travel thermos. Suddenly the aroma of heated blood filled the car. "Hey, don't take the top off! It'll spill." 

"Right, right. Know how it works." Still, he took a long whiff from the open container, then drank deep, tipping his head back. She saw the outline of his Adam's apple bobbing. 

"I don't love that smell in an enclosed space like this." 

"Right right. You don't. Sorry, pet." The lid went back on. He watched the road intently as she drove, looking around to the ocean on their left and the wooded slopes on the other side. Buffy saw his eyes go yellow. 

"I envy you, seeing like you do at night," she said. "All that detail and distance." 

He focused on her then, his eyes going the bright gold they took on just before the bumps and fangs appeared. "Can see every hair of your head." He put a hand out, brushed it back behind her ear. "Every last shining precious hair." 

She shivered, and he dropped his hand. 

"Look," she said, "here's the turning. We're here."  
  
  
  


Buffy and the vampire had been here before. It took some moments for him to know it, while he took in the strange cedar building, low and spread out like a child's blocks jumbled into the hillside, windows flashing like jewels. Just as he'd needed a moment while terror flared like a gas jet turned up too high, to know how to pull the car over, how to spring the seat belt, how to speak in the vampire's cadence and not his own, before these things clicked into confident certainty. 

But they did. As she guided the car into a space in the small lot, he saw in his mind's eye the room they'd occupied here last time, a room done in the colors of beach and sky, a wall of glass letting onto a balcony overlooking the ocean, and a wide low bed; recalled Buffy's round fecund belly, and how they'd swum in the ocean in the hours before dawn, returning to the room to fuck and nap all day behind heavy drapes. 

He understood that somehow he'd been--translated--into the vampire's body. Put in possession not just of the body, but of everything the vampire knew and remembered and felt. Every bit of the monster was there, seemingly accessible, but yet separate from himself, so there was a constant disorienting sense of overlap, of needing to reach for what he knew as one reaches for a name imperfectly recalled. How queer this was! Terrifying and _strange_ , to be pulled out of himself and thrust somewhere else. Into a body that was not his, yet was made from his, and now _was_ his own. He controlled it utterly. 

Astonishment after astonishment burst in him like a fireworks barrage, sensation piling up in wild staccato that dazzled and nearly sickened him. The sudden change of location--gone was the back garden of the London house, the hum of voices and tinkling music coming from the party indoors, the scent of Miss Addams and her directorial fan. The change of physique--he had no pulse, no warmth, and yet there was a strength inflaming his limbs that he could never have imagined--the blood tasted ambrosial, and strong as he felt, drinking it imbued him with a further power and a satisfaction sharp as hunger. The night was lit up bright as day, everything delineated more sharply than even in the Italian sunlight, and the merest inhalation brought with it a salvo of sensation, information, sheer sensual bliss. 

But that was nothing to what happened when he touched _her_. 

Buffy. He was reunited with Buffy. His wife, his doxy, his heart's delight, his torment and obsession. 

Here he was with her, and she with him, as if nothing had ever gone wrong. 

And there--he turned to watch her lift the carrier out of the backseat--was their child, the child he'd given up because he was too soft-hearted to assert his rights. 

He'd never make that mistake again. 

She tossed the keys into his lap. "Get the bags, okay?" She was already heading towards the entrance. He obeyed slowly, unlocking the car trunk, pulling out the cases--three of them, he knew, one for him, one for her, one for the baby. 

The baby. The baby, it flashed on him, was not his boy. 

He stood absorbing this, staring into the carpeted space, at the faint little bulb that illuminated it with a light he didn't need to see clearly all that was there. 

All that was there. He let it come over him now, holding himself still, allowing his mind to spread out, to creep into every interior room, every landscape, every touch, taste, scent, sight, sensation, to question and assert and take charge of this new province. The vampire. The vampire who now belonged to him. 

The vampire would share with him all he needed to know, was powerless to hide a thing. All he need do to take possession was let the knowledge pour in upon him, the way knowledge of the real world pours back when one awakens from a horrible nightmare. 

The nightmare of his abandonment and widowerhood was indeed over. 

He was in possession once more. 

When he hefted the bags, each weighed no more than a bundle of sticks. William laughed as he strode towards the door.  
  
  
  


Spike wandered out to the balcony while Buffy fed the baby and settled her back to sleep in the portable crib. She was almost certainly good for at least six hours now--the best part of the rest of the night. 

The cold wind off the open ocean slammed in through the door he'd left open, raising gooseflesh. When she went to shut it he was standing at the rail at the far end of the balcony, the wind flapping his leather, staring out at the sea with the same unfaltering attention as earlier. She wondered what he was thinking--but there'd be plenty of time to ask him, in a little while. She did the unpacking quickly, changed her skirt and blouse for a satin nightgown, brushed her hair, opened the wine and left it to breathe while she set out some things on the top of the low table that abutted the foot of the bed. 

When she opened the balcony door again, the wind tore at her hair and gown, and pressed her voice back into her throat. It was just going to get colder after midnight--too cold to swim, which might be just as well, since the babysitter she'd arranged wouldn't take Hope until after breakfast. 

"Spike, I'm ready." 

He turned, one hand still wrapped around the rail. "You look it an' all." 

"C'mon in, it's freezy." 

"Here I am." Launching himself from the rail, he closed the distance between them faster than her eye could track, the glass door slamming with a bang at the same time he snatched her into his embrace, so she jumped and shuddered and pushed back. Spike stiffened, and held on. 

The affront in his eyes startled her. 

" _Hey_ ," Buffy said. "Have mercy, Undead Guy. You're _cold._." She ducked free. "Look, they made up the fire for us, you just have to light it. When you're warmer, we'll snuggle." 

"... Right." He went to the stone hearth opposite the bed. While he knelt there, Buffy poured the wine, and looked again at the few things she'd brought along and laid out on the table. 

When the fire was lit, he came back to her and pulled her against him once more. This time she was more prepared for the chill that still radiated from his clothes and skin, and controlled her impulse to shiver. His lips warmed after a long kiss. He seemed particularly hungry for kisses. She was sympathetic, but after a few, she pushed him off in what she hoped he'd get was a playful way. 

"We have something to do first, remember?" She gestured at the table. 

"What's this?" 

"It's ... a ritual. I know I've never been Ritual Girl, but I was thinking what we could do for this anniversary, to remember Johnny--not the awful thing he became, but our son whom we love. Willow told me about something that Jewish people do. They light a candle on the anniversary of the death of a family member, and it burns for a day and a night. I thought we could light this one I brought, and ... and ... I'd like you tell me five good memories you have of Johnny. And I'll tell you my five. I brought some pictures and things along that might help us to think of him. And then ... we'll just see how it goes. Okay?" 

Spike stared at the tall glass-encased candle, and the objects she'd arranged around it. The Plaster of Paris hand print Johnny had brought hom for her from nursery school. The knotted beaded friendship bracelet he'd worn all his senior year in high school, until it was so ratty she'd made him cut it off for graduation and then kept it secretly in her jewelry box. The spare set of his glasses she'd salvaged from his London flat. And her favorite photograph of him, a snapshot she'd enlarged and put in a silver frame and took with her everywhere--her beautiful beautiful boy, shining in the dazzling California sun, that summer he'd fancied himself a surfer and never left the beach. He'd gone almost as blond as Spike, but Spike had never been baked golden like that, or worn that goofy, baked grin. She'd hated how stoned he always was that year, and yet that was how she most chose to think of him now, when she could shove the other images aside. He'd been endlessly amiable then, cheerful and giggling and impossible to provoke. 

She'd never doubted that Spike would fall in with her invented seance, though she'd kept it to herself until now. So his hesitation first puzzled and then disconcerted her. As his silence drew out, she snatched up the book of matches, and offered them to him. "Why don't you light the candle. See, I poured us some wine. We can make a toast to him, begin that way." 

The matches almost slipped through his fingers. Spike held them as if he didn't know what they were, his eyes still fixed on the things. 

"Did I--did I do wrong? If this is too hard for you, we can put this stuff away." 

He trembled. Buffy reached for him, but he stepped back, closing the matches in his fist. 

A fist he gestured with, at the make-shift altar, at her. 

"My damn mistake. Never should've ... shouldn't have left him--!" 

"Spike, you did everything you could." 

He glanced up at her slowly, and his eyes were full of a bewildered pain that tugged exquisitely at her own, so carefully controlled and tamped down. 

"Can't believe what's gone on here--I was a fool. Should've foreseen--" 

"Please don't-- Not this, not recriminations anymore. You were right. Too much funeralizing, you said. I shouldn't have started this!" Panic rising, she gathered the things up in one sweep to rush them out of his sight. The heavy candle tumbled over her wrist to fall heavily on her bare foot. "Ow! _Shit_!" She danced back; the framed photo went flying, and hit the table edge with a crack. 

She let everything else fall and rushed to pick it up, but Spike got it first. 

The glass was broken, and fell out in shards. 

Buffy began to cry. This wasn't how she'd wanted it to go at all. This was like Johnny at the last--taking every loving, well-meant gesture she'd made to him, and twisting it into ugly farce. 

He might almost have been there, sneering at her out of his yellow eyes. 

But it was Spike who was there, who set the photo down and gathered her up, brought her to the bed and knelt to inspect her foot, feeling the arch and instep and each toe with soft probing pressures. 

"Hush, pet. It's not broken." 

Exhaustion closed around her. She fell back, turned her wet face against her quilt. 

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She was all at once too tired to move, too tired even to open her eyes. Her body quivered with woe, sobs rising up like bubbles in a thick mud. 

He was silent for a time, and then he said, "Well ... it's wasn't right. You ought to know that." 

"I know. Would you just hold me?" 

He rose; she heard him step around the bed, kneel to pick up the bits of glass that chinked in his palm. When he'd thrown them away he came back, steps nearly silent on the thick pale carpeting, slipping out of his clothes at the bedside before his weight shifted the mattress beneath her. Spike spooned her, a hand cinching her ribs, the cool tip of his nose parting her hair, until his mouth lay against her nape. 

She was on the verge of sleep when he spoke, his voice murmuring along the base of her skull. "There'll have to be changes made. Do better, that's all."  
  
  
  


While Buffy slept, William lay beside her and explored. There was such a variety of information to be garnered, just by inhaling! Bit by bit he realized he could tell by her scent that she was ten days out from her last monthly courses, that he'd last fucked her early that morning, after which she'd bathed in something that hinted of almonds, and eaten eggs scrambled with salsa for breakfast. The notion of salsa, what it was, what it looked like, how it tasted to the vampire, all its associations--sometimes it was cooked and sometimes it was raw, sometimes Buffy made it herself with a machine in her kitchen, and sometimes she bought it at an enormous emporium called Whole Foods, seeped up into his awareness like words written in invisible ink resolving into view on a sheet of paper. 

With the vampire's mind, he remembered the day just ended. The events of the day, the feelings, came in flashes and elisions, like any recollection. He focused on the drive. They'd left the house at dusk, heading north. The vampire loved driving, was proud of his skill at the wheel, relished the winding highway at night, speeding ahead with his beloveds beside him in the quiet metal cocoon. 

The moment of transition came back on him--his own and the vampire's, a near-collision like the one he'd nearly caused them on the road--Spike losing control as he superceded him. 

Some terrible power had accomplished this uncanny switch. A power, William sensed, even greater than what had yanked him through time before. This power had done more than move him. It had changed him utterly. He was someone else, a bizarre hybrid. 

A sport of the unnatural. 

Surprise and budding triumph mixed with an equal part of fear--what did this alteration mean? Was it permanent? Could it possibly be the result of an idle wish coaxed from him by a young lady at a London party? How how how? 

And what, in truth, was he to do now? 

He certainly never wanted to be a vampire. He'd seen enough of them to know they were disgusting, abhorrent. Neither had he ever wanted to take a place in Buffy's world. It was her return to _his_ world, to her rightful place at his side, in his home and bed, that he'd yearned for. 

The vampire's body and being were so very alien. He could _feel_ that it was dead, and he could feel the presence of that which animated it, something dark and roiling and planted so deep as to be inextricable, unknowable--and yet he knew, just as Spike knew, that it was evil and it was himself and always would be. 

He'd wanted to escape himself, yes, but not like this! 

His stomach lurched, gagging to expel--what? Himself. 

It couldn't be done. 

Perhaps he should wake Buffy and confess. 

Even if she killed him, perhaps ... perhaps that would be better. 

The baby in the next room stirred; he could hear its heart beat and the inhalation of its breath as it awoke. It made small sounds, not crying yet. The sharp ammonia reek of its diaper reached him easily. His first impulse, to ring for a servant, was futile; there were no servants in Buffy's mileu. He considered awakening Buffy, then understood that that wasn't what the vampire would do. The vampire, all tenderness, would go to the child himself. The impulse to do so, the _desire_ , strong and imposing, gained on him now, spurring him to rise. 

He left the bed, careful not to disturb his sleeping wife, and went to the crib. 

The infant emitted small hoots, its legs stirring; when he bent over it, its hands flew up towards his face. 

A deluge of associations crashed over him as he lifted the child into his arms. The vampire had snatched many a babe from many a cradle, over and over for decades. The blood of babies was pure, delicious; visceral to him was the sensation of burying his fangs deep into a fat dimpled little neck, the richness flooding his mouth, the first long hot slurps that gave way all too quickly to the dregs, and then the impossible lightness of the half-decaptitated form, blue and drained, detritus to be flung away. He remembered that, and could smell its potential too in this slight body, even as the mere suggestion of any slight harm to _this_ little one was attached to infinite dread, horror, rage. 

The vampire's passions, a constant ferocious cascade, that washed through him every moment like the effect of some strong stimulant, weren't what startled William so much as their content. He would not have dreamed there could be so much love in an unclean monster. Spike was a wellspring of love, nearly blind, nearly helpless. 

Unlike a man, unlike William himself, the vampire had no other ambition, no other desire. Apart from that love--except there was no _apart_ within him, apart had long since become an impossibility--there was only that gnashing demon. Love trod on that demon's neck and held it down forever. 

His head swam; he caught at the edge of the crib with one hand, blinking, until he was steady again, and could lay the infant on the bureau top. 

The child was a girl. Her name was Hope, they called her Kitten. Stripping off the diaper, William saw what his new mind had already shown him--she was well-made and lovely and perfect in every way, that she resembled the slayer's sister in old photographs he somehow knew to be forgeries, but which they treasured anyway. He knew too that he adored her with a adoration that was singular and distinct from what he bore for her mother, or the other child, who was an adult now. An adoration at once more steely, and softer. Unquenchable. He knew how she had come to be, and the knowledge of that improbable beginning was a source of awe, to the vampire and now also to him. 

Though not for the same reasons. 

This child had all before her, whereas the boy he'd given back into Buffy's arms, with such pity for his cries and for his mother's sadness, such a short while ago--a matter, to him, of weeks only!--had grown up, attained his majority, been a careless fool, and was destroyed. 

William let all the details of that come to him, though the anguish of it was such that he almost preferred to resist, not to know. 

It was impossible not to know; he discovered that though he could perfectly control the vampire's body, the liquid flow of memory and senses that coexisted with his was not subject to acceptance or refusal. 

To stave off this queasy onrush, he concentrated on the task at hand. Cleaning the baby tender flesh, securing the new diaper. Taking a bottle of breast milk from the refrigerator in the suite's tiny kichen, heating it in the microwave--his fingers dancing with customary gestures over the buttons even as he marveled at the existence of a machine that could heat without growing hot. While the bottle turned in its lighted box, Hope gurgled and clutched at the ledge of his collarbone. 

"Sssh, sssh. Don't let's wake your mamma. That's a good girl." When the microwave dinged, he tested the milk's temperature and fitted the nipple against the bulging wet little mouth. The child's eyes fell contentedly shut as she began to suck. William sank into a chair. 

The infant's warmth was at once solacing against his bare cool chest, and so saddening; tears sprang to his eyes. He caught one, licked it from the pad of his thumb. It tasted odd to him; it was the wrong temperature. 

He'd lost himself. 

It seemed that no matter where he went or what he did, nothing came right. He always was misplaced. 

"Hey." 

A light came on. Buffy was in the doorway, and then she was at his side, looking down at him, her face a pale query. 

She touched his cheek. "First me, now you." 

He blinked, and turned his head. Buffy sank to the floor beside his knee, leaning against him. The baby meanwhile had fallen asleep, the nipple still poised at her lips. Buffy took the bottle from his slack grasp and set it aside before threading her fingers with his. 

"I used to think the whole problem with him was that he came to us under false pretences. I mean, he happened, essentially, because I made a wish in the presence of magic. That's never good. Even when you're sure it's the whitest of white spells, and it's all gonna be fine--there's always some huge consequence. The first time I was with William, there was no pretence. He didn't want me, and I didn't want him, and Jemima was an accident--he walked out rather than hear me tell him I was pregnant. Walked I think because he knew I was going to tell him, and he just _wasn't_ going to hear it. I got away clean, right? He died, but he had to die, because you died. But the second time, there was marriage, there were vows and obligations, there was this enormous thick _fog_ in my mind so I believed I was with him and I'd never ever be anywhere else. We were trying to have a baby, trying and trying, it was so _fraught_. So when the magic was undone, and I got back here with our son, there was this big _mess._ You never liked me to talk about it, but I couldn't forget about William, I was sure we'd robbed him, and it dogged me all his life. When Johnny was turned, when ... when all that stuff happened ... I thought I deserved it. _We_ deserved it, because we'd taken something that wasn't really ours, and we had to pay the price. 

"Only now ... I don't believe that anymore. Because however he was conceived, however he came into our lives, he owned _his_ life. We did the best we could with him and it was far far from perfect, but Johnny wasn't just some _result_ of our actions, he was a person, with will and agency, and he chose to become what he became. That wasn't my fault, or yours, or anyone but his, because at every point where he could choose, he chose wrong. And I still love him, and I will continue to miss him, but I'm ready to let go of this ... deep remorse." 

These words shocked him through and through. He felt he was standing at the edge of some enormous abyss, the wind howling at his back, nowhere to go forward and nothing to retreat into but infinite black. He sobbed; she reached again to catch his tears in her fingers. He cried harder. He was robbed, he was, and how could anything make up for it? She looked at him with such sweet pity, but it wasn't him she saw. It was the vampire, her partner in deceit; they'd used him and now she could comfortably admit it, assuming he would tell her that she was right after all. 

"I hope you can too. I don't want us to color Kitten's childhood with our regrets, our fears, about Johnny. That wouldn't be fair to her. I know I've been anxious, and I think you are too, but I want us to put that aside. This trip is about really laying Johnny to rest, so he doesn't overshadow our new baby, and us. Do you understand?" 

He struggled to keep the bitterness from his voice. "But what about William?" 

"What about him? You've never been worried on his account." 

"What do you think became of him, after you sent him away empty handed?" 

Buffy frowned, the lamplight outlining her delicate profile in a yellow glow. "I like to think he married again. He wasn't always kind to me, but I like to think he was good to his second wife, and that she was good to him. That they were all right together, like we are." 

"Like we are." 

"But what do I know?" She scrambled up, and eased the sleeping baby from his arms. Carrying her to the crib, Buffy said, "Maybe when Willow abracadabra-ed him away from Sunnydale, he ended up on Mars and suffocated, or ceased to exist altogether. We can never know." 

_And how simple that made it for you._ "Maybe." 

"We can never know. All we know is, magic always has consequences." She returned to him then, sliding onto his lap, her satin gown riding up her legs as she settled herself against him. "But it's part of our work and our lives, it's not realistic to imagine we could renounce it." 

"No." 

"And I guess it can't be all bad, it's given us so much. Given us Hope." 

  
  
  


~~~

It was no consolation, learning that he'd remained with her for twenty years as a thorn of the mind, pricking her conscience. 

No surprise that the vampire never wanted to hear about it. That perversion of himself hated William as much as William hated him--that was apparent enough when they met and the demon nearly tore his throat out. 

Buffy's arms were around his neck, her warm pooched mouth lingered near his, awaiting kisses. She wriggled in his lap, the satiny stuff of her gown rubbing against his sex. 

That's when it came to him, with a flare of distaste, that she'd been unfaithful as well to her beloved vampire. She'd put the horns on him a couple of years ago, not once but repeatedly. 

And he'd forgiven her. 

Did _that_ still prick at her conscience? Not so you'd notice. 

He couldn't stand this! Couldn't stand loving this--this-- _terrible woman_! 

William rose. She slid from his disappearing lap, still holding him by the neck. He reached up to disengage her hands. 

She pouted. "Spike--" 

"Need some air." 

"But it's so cold out. And here I am, all nice and warm." 

"Couple hours, I'll be shut in here all day." He moved away from her, began to dress. As he picked up each discarded garment, the things went from strange to familiar in his hands. He slid his feet into the scuffed boots with thoughtless nonchalance, tucked the teeshirt in. Ideas and associations whorled--was she really worthy of this infernal helpless desire he carried for her, that even her "death" couldn't extinguish? If she could be unfaithful to the vampire, her supposed true love ... didn't that prove that she was ultimately no better than the whore he'd first taken her for? 

She'd wandered towards the bed. Her voice was rigid as her turned back. " _Shut in_ , huh? I thought that was the whole point of coming out here!" 

It irritated him, sometimes, how much he needed her. Made him feel womanish, or was it childish? Not like a proper man, at any rate. 

That the vampire could surrender himself to her entirely, and yet remain so powerful, so masculine, was a flummoxing fact. 

"Just wait a bit for me, will you?" He went out the balcony door, vaulting the rail rather than taking the steps, landing with uncanny ease in the sand fifteen feet below. Already the ocean wind was with him, clearing his head, conveying natural messages he drank in long draughts. How was it that this dead body was so vital? He hadn't felt such energy, such physical _lightness_ , since the playing fields at Harrow. He broke into a sprint, then launched himself into the air and was at the water's edge in one leap. All without breathing hard, or breathing at all, except to suck in the myriad overlapping smells, that both filled and opened him in unimaginable new ways. He ran along the surf line, imbibing it all. Never had the night been his element before, but now, now he was a creature not just _of_ the darkness, but in possession, in love with it! 

Out of the corner of his eye as he coursed along, William noted the lights of houses dotted up on the cliffs; noted the sparklepoints out on the water, noted the position of the stars. Information came at him in a wild rush, yet he was perfectly able to assimilate and organize it, with some sixth sense he definitely never had before. 

And when, having covered miles of shoreline in just a quarter hour, he smelled something fresh and rich moving about in the dunes, that sense told him what it was: prey. 

He shifted direction, moving up the beach. Where a moment ago he'd simply been running, now he was tracking. William noted this with barely a twinge, as he slowed his steps so as not to be heard. That this was wrong was something he knew, but it was as unimportant as anything that had taken place on those long-ago playing fields. What was important--what was crucial--was what he could hear--clear as a tom-tom played in open air--the heartbeat of a woman. She smelled young. Her hair was dyed, she'd been drinking beer within the last few hours, she'd been in a sweat since last she'd bathed. And she wasn't moving anymore, she was waiting for him. As if placed there solely to satisfy the thirst that sprang from nowhere at first scent of her, that nagged him now, harsh and unignorable, to be quenched. As he moved closer, ascending the last dune that separated him from her, William felt his face change--bone and cartiledge and skin shifting with a dull crunching sound, a sensation like a scar being stretched. He could see every blade of dune grass, and the shadows of individual pebbles. The excitement was incredible--the hunger charged him with a further surge of power, it seemed he could leap up into the air and touch the clouds if he so desired. What he desired--what he needed now with a burning need--was to catch that woman against him, to break her skin with his fangs, and hold her tight as he swallowed long gusts of her heart's blood. 

Another moment brought him over the crest. There she was, strands of her fine hair floating along the breeze, hugging her drawn-up knees, a bottle of Heineken set into the sand close to hand. She'd wandered down from one of the houses far above, perhaps thinking she'd watch the sunrise--though she was a bit early if that was her intention--or that out here on her own in the dunes, she'd puzzle out some problem of her life, the problem that kept her from being asleep like a good human being at the tip of morning. 

She never saw him, or knew anything was amiss, until he grabbed her up from behind, a hand clapped over her mouth to stifle the scream as he fastened his fangs on her neck and bit down. Then he let her mouth go, because it was necessary to his pleasure--his intense pleasure--to hear the desperate sounds she made. He was far too powerful for her to have a chance. He loved her animal cries, her useless flailing brought exquisite savour to this, the best meal of his life. Blood! Blood, full of life, boiling out of living flesh into his mouth! How could Spike content himself with that stuff he drank out of a metal mug when there was this! 

This ... this was glorious. This was everything. _Now_ he understood! 

He gorged. By time her movements was reduced to ticcing and sighs, her pulse slowed beneath his encircling arm, William was more than full. Her head lolled forward, the mane of hair fluttering against his wrist. He dropped her then, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. 

He was lit up like a beacon. He was twenty feet tall. 

He was a vampire. 

William tipped back his head and let out a throaty crow of triumph.  
  
  
  


When he'd gone, her irritation lifted. It wasn't really fair to be angry at him--they'd made this trip in order to confront some serious emotional fall-out, and why should she assume he would always be the unflappable one? Spike misreading cues and refusing sex meant he really was out of sorts. Some hurts never healed, you just had to take care not to press on the bruise. If they had any like that in their marriage, and Buffy knew they did, Johnny was the foremost. 

The words he'd murmured as she was falling asleep earlier came back to her. Changes made. Improvement. That wasn't the kind of talk she was used to with him, but then she was still adjusting to the ways the soul had changed him--most of them pretty subtle really, but then once in a while, usually while they were watching TV, he'd come out with some moralistic scorcher that almost made her _bwa ha ha_ in his face for sounding like a schoolmarm, except that he'd always seem faintly disgusted himself, as if he'd come down with a lightning case of Tourette's and barked like a dog. 

She drank some of the wine she'd poured out earlier, and fixed herself a snack. It was likely--pretty much guaranteed--that he'd return at sun-up in a better frame of mind, wanting to make it up to her. That's how it always went, when he lost his temper--and still on the side of being fair, he lost his way less often than the other way around. Buffy decided she wouldn't say anything about it, just let it go, welcome him back the way he liked best. Slipping her nightgown off, she thought ahead to how chilled he'd be when he came in, the pleasant shiver when she'd press her bare body against him. Maybe she'd do something unexpected, like undress him with her teeth. He always responded well to any little variation that occurred to her, returning his delight to her threefold. So, yeah, maybe she'd do that, and he'd know she wasn't sore at him for walking out. In an hour she'd heat some blood for him, put it in the thermal mug all ready for his arrival. Meanwhile, she switched on the TV low, clicking until she found an old black and white movie, and settled down under the covers to wait. 

The next thing she knew, a rush of cold and the slam of a door jolted her eyes open. He was already yanking the bedclothes back, dropping onto her. Leather and flesh cold as she'd anticipated, but mouth and hands and weight hot with impatience, a repeat of his manner when they'd stopped on the road, like he hadn't been with her in weeks, like he had to take her before she was torn away forever. 

Half pinning her, he struggled with his fastenings, breathing hard against her mouth; she heard the click of his weighty belt buckle against the buttons of his jeans, then grunted a protest when the icy metal struck her belly. 

He laughed, and then his hand was there, fingers chill and rough. "Cunny's wet. Been friggin' yourself." 

"No--" 

"No. Were asleep. You're just always wet. Always wet for Spike." His fingers went into her, the thumb grinding into her clit so she jerked and groaned. His cock jutted against her hip; the tip wet when she grasped it. He'd taken her by surprise, but she was there now, excitement making her racy, her sex pulsing. He bit at her mouth, sucking on her lips and tongue. He tasted salty, she wondered if he'd been swimming. But his hair was dry. 

Her instinct was to roll him beneath, take charge. Bestow herself in a way that would engross and console him, assure him that she'd always be there. But when she started to shift, he tensed and resisted. For a second they were frozen in motionless struggle _Okay then._ She subsided instead, parting her thighs wide as he rolled on top. Again his buckle struck her; he held her head in wide-spread fingers, gnawing the sensitive place beneath her jaw. 

"D'you want me, Buffy? Say it." 

"I want you." 

"You want Spike? 

"Yes." 

"Yes, you always do." He went into her then, hard and fast.  
  
  
  


~~~

Bloody hell. Bloody fucking HELL. 

The girl was dead. She had to be dead. She wasn't dead when she hit the sand, but unless someone found her like pronto, and summoned help--and he'd know if that happened, because the ambulance and the cop cars would've come up past the B&B, sirens wailing. 

No. She'd have bled out on the sand, and her cooling body would be found any time now by some early dog-walker. 

Christ. _Christ._ He'd tried to stop it. Had been trying all night to shake off this occupying force, to be himself again. But it was no good. He was shut up inside. Perfectly able to run around inside his own head like a chicken deprived of its own, but that was all. On the beach, when William--when they both--caught that tantalizing woman-on-her-own scent, he'd tried at least to steer William clear of her. But it was like shifting a ten-ton boulder with your shoulder--you could bust yourself 'til you passed out, but the boulder wouldn't budge. The fucking boulder had no more idea you were there than ... than a bloody inanimate rock. 

This was like being one of those pathetic tossers who burst a blood vessel in the head and then can only communicate by waggling an eyelash in morse code. Except he couldn't even do that. 

And really the stroke victim had it all over him, because at least that bloke was nothing more than paralyzed and mute, flat on his back in bed, utterly hopeless and robbed of all dignity, sure, but still able to look down the cleavage of any pretty nurse that might lean over and plump his pillows, whereas _he_ was forced to ride shotgun, straitjacketed and gagged, while his body--and his child, his marriage, and his very soul--was jigged about by that supreme wanker William. 

Who, having fucked Buffy in a way that made Spike wonder why she didn't haul off and clock him, was asleep now, still lying on her heavy as a bag of moist cement. 

Spike tried to move. Just to roll over before Buffy got impatient and pushed him off. Just that much, _please please God who'll gather me to hell one day please._ But the exertion of every bit of his will had the same effect it had had on the beach: zero. 

Having his back broken and his face burned off, that was bad. The chip: that was worse. He'd have said, before, that nothing could be worse than the Initiative chip. But that was wrong. Hell, he wished the chip still worked! 

Nothing could be worse than this. 

To be right up in Buffy's face, and unable to say a word to her. To signal, or hint, or so much as _look._ He couldn't control anything, not even his eyelids. Every time he imagined he might be catching the slayer's eye, William turned his head, or closed his eyes, or buried his face in her neck, and it didn't matter, because even when he looked straight at her, it wasn't him. 

Oh God. 

It was the first blood he'd tasted--the first blood that wasn't Buffy's--in decades. 

He couldn't help going over it. Disgust, regret, and horror filled him with a sensation of something foul and viscid straining through his teeth, filling his mouth with a rancid taste, choking him. 

There was that, yes, but there was more. 

It was such a thrilling kill. 

A little too easy, maybe. A case of beginner's luck. But in its way, perfect: like just opening one's mouth for the plum to drop in. 

And there! Spike thought, wanting to tear the image to bits--that was William all over, _plums_! 

Had he come this far to shake off every vestige of his old self, only to be imprisoned by him again. 

Oh God, oh God, he was trapped! 

Buffy stirred beneath him, expelling a long sigh. "Hey sleepy guy. Roll over." 

William was oblivious. Buffy eased out from beneath him, then knelt beside him on all fours--Spike couldn't see her, because his eyes were closed, but sensation and scent told him that she was looking at him, her face up close to his. Then her fingers were in his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead, a gentling meant more for her, he thought, than him. 

"You're good," she whispered. "You are, sweetheart." 

Then the mattress shifted and she was up and away; he heard her lift the baby out of her crib, heard the small sounds of diaper changing and feeding, and in a little while Buffy left the room. He remembered then, about the babysitter--they'd arranged with the B&B for Kitty to be looked after all day so they could be alone. 

He'd have to ride along all day while William put it to her. _With my own bloody dick!_ Somehow that made it worse. 

Spike tried to wake him up. He wanted to punch him--it would've been funny, if it wasn't so horrible--imagining punching himself in the face like that idiot in _Fight Club._

But William was stuck in. What did he have to wake up for? He'd fed, and he'd fucked, and now he would probably sleep for hours, until Buffy roused him with kisses, or maybe straddling his face. 

She'd have to figure it out, wouldn't she? The wanker wouldn't be able to do _that_ right, and she'd twig to it. Wouldn't know all the tricks and manners of her sweet little clit, wouldn't know-- _Shit._ He'd know. 

He knew everything! 

Spike paced the confines of his own mind. Dark, it was dark in here, no crack anywhere, no let-up. Just a black confined space full of the present and the past and nothing to do but sift sift sift through memories that were no help to him like this. No help at all. It was easy to guess what William would do now, because he _was_ William, had been, anyway, once upon a time, and all that onrush of power when he was turned was just the same last night as it was back in 1880. He wouldn't stop with just the one. 

He'd probably want to go on the spree. 

Christ Christ Christ. 

Spike screamed. Screamed and screamed, but he couldn't move his mouth, couldn't make a peep. 

Mute and motionless and lost in plain sight. This was hell.  
  
  


~~~

His belly roared, and he was awake. 

William sucked his teeth, wanting to find again the flavor of that woman on the beach. And then the ache hit. Good God. 

He'd murdered a woman. 

He'd murdered a woman with his own hands and mouth--he'd ravaged her like an animal. 

The next moment he was out of bed, wretching into the toilet. But there wasn't much to bring up; the dry heaves propelled him to his knees, and then he rested his forehead against the cool rim of the bowl. 

He'd murdered a woman and he wanted to do it again. 

No no no. This would not do. This would not do at all. 

"This is not what I am. I'm a human being." 

But his belly was roaring again already. A sharp hunger he experienced through his whole body, like an urge or calling. 

He went to the refrigerator. His blood supply was there, in an opaque sealed container. Pig blood. 

He didn't _want_ pig blood poured from plastic. He wanted-- 

The door opened and shut, and then Buffy was at his elbow, radiating her warmth. "Good morning. Kitlet's fine, she's with her sitter, and I've had my breakfast--do you want me to heat that--oh, what's the matter?" 

He didn't know what she meant until her fingers touched his face and he realized he was in tears. Tears of frustration and disgust, because he was ravenous, damn it, and he wanted what he wanted, and it was wrong, and anyway, he couldn't go out hunting again now the sun was up. 

But when she touched him he found out something else--he'd tasted her. 

More than tasted--he fed from her. Often. 

He could probably do so right now, if-- 

Buffy's eyes were round with concern. "Spike?" 

"Dream," he said, blinking the tears away. "Just--bit of a bad dream." 

"About Johnny?" 

"Never mind, love. It's past." 

She sighed when he pulled her into his arms, settled her own around his waist and squeezed hard. She smelled wonderful, of coffee and the dew of sleep and sex. He took a long deep whiff of her hair, which augmented his hunger but was comforting too. He pulled her in tighter, kissing along her jaw and neck, imbibing the aroma of her skin and the blood beneath. Buffy tensed and then immediately relaxed; a rousing response, that told him all he needed to know. 

What a slut she was--supposedly sworn to fight evil and yet giving herself, over and over, to slake the infernal thirst of the demon! 

Yet at the same time this glad nuzzling--fingers creeping into his hair to cradle his head--filled him with tenderness. She trusted him, she was glad to give herself, glad to be taken. He thought of his pride a few hours ago, when she'd given him rough for rough as they fucked, coming over and over and always meeting his eyes when he looked into hers. 

She was an extraordinary creature, far far beyond what he could possibly deserve, and he worshipped her with everything he was. 

She was up on tiptoe now, the better to offer him her neck. He kissed her there, and put her gently back. "Would you heat me a cup, love? I'll run a bath meanwhile. Maybe you'll join me there?" 

Her anxiety disappeared into a smile. "That's a very good idea." 

As the bath filled--this suite had an enormous bathroom with a deep Jacuzzi tub--William paced, the tiles cool beneath his cool bare feet. One wall of the room was mirrored, but he didn't appear there, or in the mirror over the sink where he brushed his teeth, trying to expel the strong physical memory of sinking his fangs into that strange woman's neck, tugging on her flesh and sinew until it tore, sucking down her arterial blood. This invisibility troubled him--how easy it would be to imagine that he wasn't real, and therefore that the woman he'd killed wasn't ... actually dead. 

But she was. He knew she was. 

When the tub was full he stepped in and sank down. There were things to like about this time and place--the lack of servants was troublesome, but it was certainly pleasant to turn a tap anywhere and get hot water. Buffy came in with the sealed mug, which she set down where he could reach it, before shrugging out of her robe and nightgown. He held his arms out to her. She stepped into the tub, hissing--"You always make it too hot." She leaned forward to turn the cold tap on, and he enjoyed the view of her smooth golden back, the curve of her breast, before she turned again and settled down beside him. 

"Bad dream all gone?" 

"Like it never was." He took a long drink of the pig's blood, forcing away his urge for something different. In the heated water, and Buffy all warm and pulsing lying against his chest, he almost felt his body was alive too. How nice it would've been to bathe together like this in Italy. It never had occurred to him that a lady and gentleman could share a tub this way. 

Too many things that never occurred to _him_ , which was why she loved the vampire best. 

She seemed to drowse, and he was content to soak and steam in silence as well, turning over his own thoughts and those of Spike which came to him like picking up pretty stones from a stream bed to examine in the sunshine, where they glinted and glittered. He understood that all the light in Spike's mind--and there was a lot--was because of her. 

She'd done so much--saved the world over and over, sacrificed and suffered and died and been recalled, and in the midst of all that she'd led this demon into the light. She was his sun. 

The words he'd spoken to Cecily Addams in the garden came back to him. _I wish I could be he whom she honors and desires and loves above all else!_

She'd done it. She'd worked this, God alone knew how, and she'd taken him at his word--to the very letter. For what purpose he couldn't imagine, but here he was. 

If he was to stop being a damn fool, now was the time. He could assume the vampire's great good fortune, and great happiness. Be the husband of this wonderful, powerful woman, fighting at her side, hearing all her confidences, and enjoying her charms, while himself remaining immortally young and strong. All he need do was live by the rules Spike accepted, surrender himself, as Spike had done. Surely he could do that--what the vampire, who was, after all, himself in the first place--had done before. 

Buffy need never know about the body in the dunes. If she did hear about it, she'd never suspect him, surely? There must be vampires everywhere, and she'd trusted him so long and so fruitfully, her thoughts would never turn that way now. 

He'd get away with this one, and must just take care in future ... never to do it again. 

She stirred, turning her cheek against his shoulder. "Tuppence for your thoughts." 

"Got none. I'm blank as--as a vampire in a hot bath with his best beloved." 

"Ha." Her hand closed around his prick, which instantly began to fill as she squeezed it. "There's some ideas forming down here. But I can usually tell what those are." 

"One track, yeah. Just wants to be inside of you." He slipped his own hand between her thighs, found her slick, and still a little swollen from what they'd done before. 

"Spike?" 

Her tone had changed in an instant. Whispering, and almost raspy. When he looked at her, there was a question in her eyes. "Listen, I don't want to be a ... but just tell me. We're okay, right?" 

"How could you think we weren't?" 

"You were kind of in a funny place last night. Don't get me wrong, the sex was good, I like it that way, but the whole time I felt like ... like there was something going on that ... I wish we could just air it all out. I mean, that's what we came up here for. If you're angry at me, you should just say so." 

"Not at you." 

"At who, then?" 

"Dunno. Maybe myself. But never mind." 

"But I do mind. I think you didn't like what I said about Johnny. About letting go of my remorse. Did it sound ... I dunno ... callous?" 

He hesitated. 

"I didn't mean it that way." She took a breath. "In fact, I thought it was what you'd want me to say. I thought you were the one, more than me, who was ready to place it in the past." 

He felt he should say something, but he couldn't think what the right thing was. He'd never be able to tell her the truth, of course. He'd only ever be able to tell Spike's truth, and that wasn't his own. When she'd been confronted by both of them, she'd chosen the vampire, she'd sent him away. 

Buffy sat up and turned to face him. 

"Sweetheart. I know I can be tough-minded. Too much, sometimes. I guess I underestimated what you're still feeling about Johnny. I'm sorry." 

"Some things never come right. Just have to let them be. I'm not angry with you, though." 

"You were last night." 

Should he admit it? She seemed to want him to. 

"A bit. But it's over now." He gathered her in, lifting her to straddle him, then slid further down into the water, immersing his head. At first he held his breath, but the tight sensation in the lungs wasn't there. Above the water, a laugh escaped her; she wriggled against him, moving up as he slid further down, until he was between her wide-spread thighs. He expelled bubbles, that caught in her pussy hair and made her laugh again; he was empty of air, and needed none. He caught her clit between gentle teeth, sucked on it, licking at the tip with the edge of his tongue. She thrashed hard, splashing, and let out a squeal. He grabbed her hips to hold her in place, but as he got to work, her movements quieted into a purposeful short rocking that freed him to use his hands elsewhere, slipping fingers into her silky cunt. She gasped, and gasped again when he pressed fingertips tight into the spongey flesh that Spike's memory showed him was the _the sweet spot that makes her gibber like a little monkey girl_.  
  
  
  


 _Fuck off! Fuck off! That's mine, that is!_

Spike didn't know how much more of this he could stand--not that there was anything to do but stand it. No way out of this cage. Eating Buffy's snatch was the closest thing to heaven he knew or ever would, but this puppetry made him hate it. 

He banged around in the black, through room after room of heaped memories, snatches of songs, faces and flavors and fights. No egress, nothing nothing nothing. 

But then ... there was something. 

A pinpoint of light. 

Infinitely tiny and far away, but he struck out after it. The sensation was one of tunneling--tunneling through layers of hard-packed dense earth, scrabbling through with bleeding fingers. Like when he'd dug himself out of his own grave, except that was just six feet of topsoil, still loose from the bonemen's shovels, and this was more like trying to get out from the bloody center of the earth. 

But the pinpoint of light was real, he could sense that it was something worth struggling towards. 

And while he did, at any rate, he could dissociate at least a little bit from what William was doing with _his_ face, _his_ mouth, _his_ tongue. 

It took hours. Hours of exhaustive flailing and striving--through the rest of the bath, and hours of nearly constant activity in bed--it got infinitessimally easier when William dozed, but he didn't sleep long, and measureably harder when he was laboring towards orgasm, and Buffy, with the help of the handcuffs, kept him in a long teasing simmer at one point that made Spike want to screech. At last dusk came, and they put some clothes on and went out to stroll on the beach. The pin-prick of light meanwhile had turned into a spot of glow, and he was beginning to hear sounds he couldn't make out, that had nothing to do with where Buffy and William were. 

A final burst of desperate effort brought him through. 

Into-- 

Into more dark. The light was gone, and he still couldn't see anything, or move. He heard the ocean, and Buffy and William's voices, but they sounded far far away now, and other noises were far more immediate--voices, sounds of rattling and creaking, and something that might've been the clanging of a metal gate. 

Spike struggled for vision, for movement. 

He heard footsteps, and then a chair scraping on a wooden floor. 

"I will sit with him now. Cook has your supper ready in the kitchen, Kate." 

That voice! 

His mother's voice.  
  
  
  


 _Mother. Mother!_ He couldn't open his eyes, or speak or move. And yet now the sounds were starting to organize themselves into something he could parse. The crackle of a coal fire in a bedroom grate, the noise of horse-carriage traffic on a cobbled street, and the ringing echoes of men's footsteps on the slate pavements below. 

A different voice spoke from the doorway. "He hasn't moved, mum. I kept ever such an eye on him." 

"I know you did." 

"'E just looks like he's sleepin'. Like he ought to wake up any moment." 

"And perhaps he will." 

"I'll be back directly I've had my supper, Missus Grieves." 

"Take your time, Kate. Don't bolt your food, now." 

The girl's steps receded down the stairs, and then a warm hand covered his own. 

"William dear, can you hear me? I think you can. My boy, Mamma is here." 

Spike looked back--not that it was exactly _looking_ , what with the not really having eyesight in his mind or through this ectoplasmic time tunnel connecting his body in the 21st century with William's in the 19th. He was present in both, could see Buffy wading in the surf, because William was looking at her, and hear their chatting just as before, though it was easier now to tune it out--at last he had some distance. 

He smelled the salt-laden wind of where they were, was aware of the small animals of the dunes, rabbits, the raccoons that lived up among the homes on the cliffs. But at the same time he smelled the dusty chill aroma of the room where William's body lay. 

His hand was squeezed again between both of hers, and then his mother began to pray, murmuring the words just loud enough to catch. 

Some heaviness lay over this form, tucked beneath eiderdowns, but he was _in it_ , and being in, Spike was determined to make it move and speak. If he couldn't have his own body, he'd bloody well have _something._ He struggled again, felt himself rising, fighting through the aspic. The body came into greater focus: the focus was pain. A searing headache across the back of his eyes, which felt boiled. Thirst. A cramping in his limbs, and terrible hollowness in the belly. 

His mother's whispered prayers continued. He battened not on the words but the sound of her voice, crisp and precise and warm--removed for nearly two hundred years but never by him entirely forgotten. And the warm dry clasp of her hands. He pictured her hands--they were rather rough for a lady's, because misfortune had forced her to work harder in the home than she was ever meant to do, but the fingers were elegantly tapered, and they were always gentle. Directing all his will at the goal, Spike tried to return the pressure of her fingers clasped round his. 

Mrs Grieves cried out. "William! Oh my darling boy, are you there?" She kissed his fingertips. 

Inside him, something that had been impenetrable until that moment parted, and he was able to curl his hand around her cheek. 

She began to sob. 

Spike opened William's eyes, and saw his mother's face for the first time in almost two centuries. 

"My son--my sweet boy! Do you hear me?" 

"I hear you, Mamma." The voice was a croak. He cleared his throat. She beamed at him, eyes brimming, pressing his palm against her cheek. 

"And can you see me? Can you move your limbs?" 

"See you, yeah. I mean--yes, Mother. And I think I can move." He wriggled his feet beneath the covers. Everything ached, but all was present. 

"Oh my dear, I was so anxious. The doctor said it was a stroke--like that which felled your poor father--but I hoped it wasn't so." 

Then she was on her feet, ringing for a servant. "I'll give you a drink of water--just a small one, mind!--to start with. And I'll have a little gruel sent up if you think you could eat it." 

_Gruel!_ He didn't want gruel. His belly told him what it wanted was a good thick steak. But when he tried to prop himself up, his arms felt flabby; he couldn't lift his own weight. The effort made his heart pound; sweat broke out on his upper lip. _Bloody hell, didn't miss this too solid flesh._

His mother rushed to stop him from another attempt, lifting him herself, plumping the pillows, and then bringing the glass of water to his lips. He felt a little more vibrant when he'd finished it. 

He couldn't stop looking at her. Her wavy grey hair was fixed in the usual way, and her expression was the same sweet one he recalled. She wore deep black mourning for her daughter-in-law--he remembered her always in mourning--but not of such fine quality. She'd never worn such becoming jet jewelry, either. 

William was providing for her in a way _he_ hadn't been able to. 

"What happened to me?" 

"Do you remember going to Lady Rivers' house? You fell ill there. Lady Rivers' footmen bore you back here and helped me put you to bed, and I summoned Dr Thorne. You were insensible for a night and a day. It's just after nine o'clock now. The doctor should be in directly--he promised to call again on his way home." 

"I'm better." With an effort, Spike sat forward, and started to swing his legs over the side. His mother sprang out of her chair, trying to press him back, but now he was stirring, he had a powerful need to piss. "I'm all right, Mother. Look, here I am on my legs. Why don't you wait outside the door for a bit?" 

She frowned, but after a moment, comprehension dawned, and she left the room. Spike poked a toe under the bed, feeling for the chamber pot. The urine was dark yellow and thickish. Disgusting. Come to think of it, he felt disgusting in general--his body smelled rank, the skin was greasy, and he had a rough days' growth of beard covering his cheeks and chin. His heart was still racketing around in his chest in a way that made him want to cough--Spike wondered if William was ill. He certainly felt puny, but that might be because of the not-being-a-vampire, and coming out of a magically-induced coma. Wasn't he supposed to have been cured of consumption by moving to Italy? He thought Buffy had said so, but then he wasn't sure if one _could_ be cured that way. He felt as punk as he ever had that winter before he met Drusilla and was delivered forever from his old hollow-chested, moist-armpitted self. 

"Mother?" He cracked the bedroom door. "Any chance of a bath?" 

He didn't know this house, it wasn't the same one he'd left. It was altogether a finer one--bigger, more richly furnished, though he couldn't imagine that his mother had chosen the things; William must have let it furnished after his Italian adventure. But Spike was pretty sure he wasn't going to be led into the sort of bathroom he was hoping for. 

The only place he was led was back to bed, where his mother insisted he recoup his strength and wait for the doctor, who would decide when and if a bath was appropriate. The servant brought a basin of water and a cloth, so he could wash his face and hands. Within the hour, the doctor came--pretended to have been confident from the first that William would regain his faculties--and prescribed beef tea and a week of bed rest. 

There was no way Spike was going to sit still for that, but he kept quiet, thanking the man and pretending to be sleepy so he'd leave. His mother followed the doctor out, leaving him alone in the soft light of an oil lamp on the bedside table. Back in California, Buffy and William were still strolling the beach, arms wrapped around each other. He'd taken her in the opposite direction of where he'd killed the woman--it surprised Spike that Buffy hadn't heard of it from the innkeeper. Surely the body had been discovered that morning? Probably the B&B people didn't want to alert the guests about a grisly murder nearly on their doorstep--that kind of thing would be bad for business. 

This bedroom, unlike those of the house in Bayswater he'd left that last wretched evening, was provided with every solid middle-class comfort--a thick soft rug on the floor, clean brocade hangings around the bed, fresh wallpaper and tasteful, not-very-good paintings in gilt frames. The brushes laid out on the dresser were of chased silver. There was plenty of coal in the scuttle. Spike went to the window. The street he saw below was clean and quiet, on a leafy square, lined with white-fronted houses, their windows aglow. William had come up quite far in the world. His world. 

Spike had to find the way to put him back there, where he belonged. 

He opened the window, leaning out to inhale the night air. All his senses were blunted--vision blurry, hearing muffled, and his nose might as well have been stopped up for all the information he could glean that way. It was like a bloody joke--last night he'd re-experienced that initial awakening to all the demon's heightened powers as William discovered them, and now here he was suffering without them. 

What good was it, inhabiting this body? Maybe it was a mistake to leave his own even this much--except that it was a relief to be able to move about even in this limited way, after being trapped and utterly powerless. 

There was a knock on the door, and his mother came in again. "What are you doing out of bed? Didn't you hear what Dr Thorne said?" 

"There's nothing wrong with me." 

"You've got to rest. Why is this window open? You'll catch a chill, and then-- Oh William, should anything happen to you--!" 

"It's all right, Mother." He let her lead him back to bed. She extinguished the lamp, and was about to leave, when he caught her hand. "Mother, wait." 

"What is it?" 

"Do you ... have you got everything here you need? Anything lacking?" 

"Why William, why should you think of such a thing now?" 

"I want you to be comfortable." He threaded his fingers in with hers. Odd how he hadn't really missed her, and yet now he was with her, he missed her so sharply. 

"Certainly you know I am. Though it was never my intention to remove from Bayswater, I was perfectly content to remain in my own old house with--but never mind that now. I know this square is more convenient for you." 

"If there's anything--" 

She paused. He couldn't see her face, just her shape against the glow of the dying fire. "My dear, are you thinking of making some change?" 

"What change?" 

"Is there a--that is--are you thinking of bringing home a second Mrs Grieves? Certainly I hope you'll marry again, but it's so soon ...." 

"Not yet, Mother. It's you I was thinking about." 

"You're always so kind, but my dear, you should think of yourself. Your recovery, and your career, and when the time is right--" 

"Yes. Well, good night then, Mother." 

When she was gone, Spike stole out of bed again, and returned to the window. He felt that time was wasting--he wanted to dress and get outside before the church clocks struck midnight. 

But the night wasn't William's time. It was hard to remind himself of that, and startling to realize that come the morning, he'd be able to go out into the sunlight. 

He pulled a chair by the sill, and sat there to breathe the cool air. On the beach, William was swimming with his body; when he closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, he felt himself bob in the water, the cold slap of Buffy's playful splashes, the briny taste of what he swallowed, and the wet warmth of Buffy's skin when William pulled her into his arms. 

He was in two places, two centuries, at the same time, and not really properly situated in either one.  
  
  
  


Jemima flapped the wide-spread sheets of the _LA Times._ When Angel glanced up from his book, she said, "Did you see this?" 

"You're the one that got to the paper first, so, safe to say, no." 

"There's a little item here that says that a local woman was found dead on the beach up in Costa Acantilados. She was, according to the AP, savaged by an animal. The police suspect a pack of dogs, which they claim are prevalent in the area due to people letting their pets run wild." 

"Vampire bites woman. Film at eleven." 

"I know, but isn't Costa Acantilados where Mamma and Papa are?" 

"Buffy didn't tell me where they were going, just that they'd be gone a couple of days. Did she tell you?" 

"I thought she said the B&B was in Costa Acantilados. It's not like I wrote it down or anything. It's too bad though, they were supposed to be having some good couple time, not having to chase down vamps." 

"Chasing down vamps is good couple time," Angel said, turning a page. 

"Should I call them?" 

"What for?" 

Jemima opened her mouth to answer, but realized Angel was right--what for? Her parents were there, they'd know about it. And it wasn't like she'd had a vision. Just spotted a little item in the paper--which was the only unusual thing about it. Vamp attacks were seldom reported on in the news. 

Angel rose from his chair, leaving the book on the seat, and sidled up beside her. "What?" 

She glanced up. "What what?" 

"You're concerned about it? Or about them? Something." 

"Just ... I don't know. Antsy." She pushed back from the table and crossed her arms. "Maybe I need more exercise." 

"We should've gone away somewhere too." 

"I'm not saying--" 

"It's our anniversary, after all." 

Jemima blinked. " _Our_ \--oh my." 

"I didn't know if ... because of your brother's death ... I wasn't sure, so I didn't ... " 

She put a hand on his arm to quiet the stammering. "God, I'm such a ninny, all I've been thinking about for weeks is Johnny's anniversary--and there _really_ should be a separate word for the anniversary of a death, shouldn't there?--and I just completely blocked out that it was ours too. Just completely." 

"Well, it's sad," Angel said. "Everything that happened. To him. To you." He always went sheepish in a particular way when the subject of her brother came up, as if he was bracing himself to take a brunt of blame she'd never yet laid on him. "It's been a year." 

"It's hard to believe. It seems like less. And more." 

"Does it?" Angel's hand slid gently into her hair, as he bent over her. 

When he touched her she realized she was still a beat behind, and leapt to catch up. " _We've_ been a year." She shifted in her chair, threaded an arm around his neck. "I'm sorry I didn't think of it. That's not good, is it?" 

"Don't be sorry. Are you all right?" 

She nodded. "We really should do something special. Our _anniversary_. Oh sweetheart, look at us. A _year_." 

Angel brightened. He dropped into a crouch beside her. "Do I make you happy, Jem?" 

"No. You're boring and you talk too much and you never take me anywhere at night. Also you're dull in bed." She pouted. "I know you're fed up with me, too." 

"You're a disaster. Can't stand you." 

They exchanged a wry look. 

"Seriously--do you want to talk about--about your brother? Because you know, if--" 

She put a finger on his lips. "No. You know, I really don't. But I do want to do something about this very important anniversary, and I hereby declare that we can unhitch the two. I was in love with you before my brother was ... was gone. And if he was still with us, in his right mind, he'd be happy for us." 

"Let's not go crazy here." 

"No, I think he really would be. You never knew him, Angel. Not actually. We were goofy about each other and we used to know what made each other happy. Even though--even though neither of us was very happy, after a certain point." 

They _were_ talking about him, Jemima realized, or soon would be, if she didn't nip it in the bud. Which was easy to do, just by sliding off her chair and onto Angel's knee. "So what should we do to celebrate? Maybe you can take me to the ballet. Or the drive-in. Or an opera." 

"You don't like opera." 

"But you do, and I like you." She snuggled in against him, nipping at his jaw. "Why don't you take me to bed right now, and I bet I'll sing you a little aria, which should get you in an appropriate mood, to, you know, get us tickets to something for tonight?" 

"I guess I'll have to buy you one of those expensive restaurant meals too, at one of those places where I'll have to put on a tie," Angel said glumly, tipping her over his shoulder as he rose to his full height. 

"You know how famished I get after my aria." She took advantage of her placement to begin tugging Angel's shirt out of the back of his trousers. 

As he lurched past the table with her, the pages of the newspaper sifted to the floor. 

  
  
  
  


Spike squinted. The morning was bright and warm--not at all the kind of London day that came first to memory, but there must have been plenty of them, in his lifetime. He stood in the shade of the house doorway, leary of stepping across the threshold into that bright deadly light, but aware that the parlor maid who had handed him his hat and gloves was waiting just behind him to shut the door. 

Then his mother appeared from the drawing room. "My dear, I think you really _ought_ to remain at home today and rest. It was only last night that you--" 

"No need, Mother. I'm right as rain." She'd beseeched him all through breakfast--a breakfast he'd eaten in a strange mixed state of hunger and bewilderment, not having tasted kippers or deviled kidney in he couldn't think when, and nearly overwhelmed by his mother's fluttering proximity. He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her and kiss her, but sensed that this would alarm rather than reassure. Being near her just made him long for a connection with her that was impossible, since he couldn't tell her the truth, couldn't tell her what he'd become, the bad or the good of him. Couldn't introduce her to his wife or her grandchildren. 

So on the whole he preferred to get out of her way. 

He was longing for Buffy, for Kitten; listening out for them all the while, aching to touch them. 

He tugged on the unfamiliar hat brim and stepped out as if pushed, bracing himself for what he knew wasn't going to happen. 

No burning, no flames. He was an ordinary young man, going out into an ordinary London morning. 

An ordinary morning, but nothing ordinary for _him_ , who hadn't felt the sun on his skin for almost two centuries. Across the street, the breeze stirred the leaves of the square's trees, exposing their silvery undersides with a soft delightful rustling sound. He wanted to take off the hat and tip his head back and bask. 

But this foray into his past wasn't a pleasure trip. He had an urgent call to make. He was going to get things set right. 

Cecily Addams' house, the house from which he'd bolted to his death, was only a few squares away. A ten minute stroll would bring him there, not like the journey he'd made to the fatal party all those years ago, when he'd lived in far less fashionable surroundings, or the time a few days later that he'd returned there at night and made Cecily pay for her snub with her life. 

None of that had happened in _this_ version of the past. The Cecily he'd known couldn't have been a vengeance demon--she wouldn't have been so easy to rape and kill if she was. If he had in fact killed her. Perhaps she'd let him think he was ravaging her when all the while it was an illusion. No way to know, and not important now--what he needed now was to make the bloody bitch undo this game and put him back in possession of himself. 

Spike found himself recognized by some of the men and ladies who strolled past him; he had greetings to return; once he had no choice but to stop and chat with a fellow who hailed him familiarly, glad to see he'd recovered from his illness of the other evening, which was, apparently, the talk of the town. He was able to dredge up the man's name from William's memory, and a second-hand replay of how he knew him, when and where he'd last seen him, curious and disorienting because the knowledge was in his head but was not _his._ As he shook the man's hand, saying he had to get on, he was aware that back in his stolen body, he could hear Buffy singing to the baby. That made him hasten his steps.  
  
  
  


The house where he'd suffered his terminal humiliation, was one of a neat white Georgian crescent. Like all the others, it was quiet and mute at this late morning time. 

Spike knocked on the door. After a long wait, a small scullery-maidy sort of girl in a filthy apron opened it. "I'm not to show the 'ouse," she said, before he even opened his mouth. "You're to read the d'rection." She handed Spike a piece of paper, blotted with her dirty fingerprints at the edges. "I'm to put that in the winder only I haven't just got 'round to it yet." 

"I'm looking for Miss Cecily Addams." 

"They're all gone away, sir. Miss Addams an' her 'panion done gone for the contentment." 

"The contentment?" 

"On the boat train, sir." 

"The _continent._ When? Where? Did she leave an address?" 

The girl shook her head, and rubbed at her nose, which was smutty, and made smuttier still by her blackened fingers. "I'm doin' the muckin' out an' that's all I knows about anythin'." 

"When did she go? Today? Yesterday?" 

"Yes'dy morn fust thing." 

_Buggering FUCK._ Well what did he expect? That she'd go on sitting on her tuffet like little Miss Muffet? No, she'd flit off to ruin the lives of some foreigners, that was how they did, the vengeance girls. 

"If you want to see the 'ouse you're to read the d'rection." 

The direction on the notice, which said _Genteel family residence to let,_ was a place some streets away where inquiries were to be made. Well, he might as well go there; perhaps they'd have a forwarding address. 

The maid snatched the paper out of his hand, and shut the door. A moment later the drape stirred in the drawing room window, and he saw her again, fixing the notice against the glass. 

Spike turned to face the street. The only people in sight were a nanny dressed in mourning wheeling a perambulator, and a boy with a cart making deliveries for a butcher. He was beginning to sweat under the tight collar of his shirt. The light hurt his eyes, even with the hat brim to shade them, and his senses felt blunted; he couldn't smell the things he was used to being able to smell, and that made him feel half-blind and deaf as well--which he was, compared to what he was used to. How did humans manage to stumble through life with so little information? 

How would he manage if he could never get back to himself? 

Christ, _Christ,_ he didn't want to think about that. Back in the 21st century--in _reality_ \--Buffy was taking a bath, bathing Kitten at the same time. William was sitting on the side of the tub, keeping them company, his eyes fixed on Buffy's breasts floating on the water like lilies, but his mind wandered--he was reliving the kill, scolding himself, bargaining with himself, making peaceable reasonable promises he didn't really intend to keep. 

He would tell himself up and down and sidewise that he'd never unleash on anyone else, but he was going to do it, it was just a matter of time, days, probably. 

And Buffy didn't know. 

What if she never knew? 

Spike set off towards the estate agent's office. At the corner he was almost knocked over by a cab; the damn hat flew off and rolled under the wheels, and his heart went racketing in his chest like a locomotive. A passerby caught him by the arm and asked him if he was all right. 

_I'm out of practice with these times._

At the agent's office his bare-headedness earned him a dubious look; he was told that there was no information about Miss Addams; the house didn't belong to her, and no one there knew where she'd gone. 

That was that, then. 

It was nearly noon on a warm bright London day in 1884 and he was stranded. 

Spike walked into the first pub he could find.  
  


~~~

 

They were about to leave, Buffy was packing and fussing over the baby and barely seemed to notice when he said he fancied one last turn on the sands and would be back with her in a quarter hour. 

He couldn't resist the urge anymore, the urge to seize this last perfect opportunity. They'd be leaving here to drive back to the city, she'd never ever know. He'd find someone quickly, do it quickly--he didn't think he could face being shut up in the car with her and the baby, feeling their pulses and breathing their visceral aromas, if his thirst wasn't slaked first. 

When he came back, striding as a king, she was sitting on the arm of a chair, flicking impatiently through a magazine, the baby strapped into her carseat on the table beside her. "Please tell me you weren't out there smoking," she grumbled. 

He smiled. The high of the kill, the feast, all that freshness percolating through him, made him feel brand new. "Let's be off. I'll drive." 

There was the fuss of settling up, saying goodbye to the hosts, getting the baby and the bags into the car, but he barely noticed that, his mind was still in the windy dune, where he'd just done for a fresh-cheeked teenage boy who fought with a futile imperious sweetness as he died. 

Buffy was quiet, head turned away, for the first few miles along the coast highway. 

He was content in the silence; there was a lot to think of: what they were going back to. The other vampire, Angel. His place. The memories and associations William found shocked and disgusted him--on Buffy's behalf, and on his own, and on behalf of the grown-up daughter he felt possessive of, though he didn't know her. 

He didn't want anything to do with this Angel, who wielded such a bludgeon-force in both their lives. They'd have to get away from LA soon. 

Buffy sighed. "Okay, I know this didn't go so well." 

"What do you mean? Didn't we have a good time?" 

"We weren't here to have a _good time._ " 

"I only meant--" 

"What I said." 

"What you said?" He couldn't keep up with her. She was looking at him now, her eyes foggy. 

"About letting go of grief, or whatever that was. I didn't mean it. I couldn't. Johnny was our _child._ He will always be, and I will never not want to make it right with him. To make him right. God, I'm so stupid sometimes." 

He wasn't ready for this. "Not ... not so." 

"I just don't want you to think I'm really that hard. I know I've put aside a lot of loss, I've had to, we both have. But I'm not so callous. I'm never going to be able to think of Johnny as just in the past." 

He could feel in his sinews Spike's natural impulse to put a hand out to caress her cheek, to tell her that he knew her well, knew her better than anyone, and so understood that the last thing she was was callous and hard. But as he made the gesture, said the comforting words, William wondered. What was she, this creature? Not a lady, as he'd first believed, and not merely a woman, either--and he was by no means ready to believe she wasn't hard as flint. As she pressed her cheek into his hand, drew his palm against her lips, his belly churned around the blood in it. She was the _slayer._ The demon that inhabited him knew all about how righteous and terrible she was--it felt her power, a constant prickling, a whispered threat on the wind. 

She might be his wife, but he would never be able to control her, or what she was. And much as he might love her--a love that manifested in sharp bursts of curiosity and desire and need--he would never understand her, not if he plumbed Spike's mind for a million years. 

She kissed his hand, and held it. He felt her heart accelerate, her skin flush. "I don't know what my life would've been these last thirty years without you. I don't know how I could've faced the immortality thing I seem to have, if you weren't with me. I think about it and try to figure it and it scares me--ha ha--to death. But I mean it. Do you know I need you, Spike? I'd be so lost if you weren't with me." 

She didn't smell the murder on his fingers. She squeezed them, and returned his smile.  
  
  


~~~

"Look, I've read _all_ the novels, so I _know._ _Tom Jones_ and _Pride and Prejudice_ and everything by Trollope and Anthony Powell. People danced in the 18th century, and the 19th century, and the 20th century. So I continually ask myself--and now I ask you--why don't you dance? There's no possible way you don't know how." 

Angel squirmed. "There's dancing and there's dancing." 

"Exactly. And I'm talking about _dancing._ The proper kind, with steps everyone knows in advance." 

"My partners always used to end up dead." 

"Is that really it? Why you won't dance." 

"Or, when I was still alive, I'd give 'em the clap." 

"Oh, _nice._ " 

"You asked." 

"Mama told me you came to her high school prom, and danced with her. She says she loves that memory. So I know you're perfectly capable--" 

"Jem, what do you want?" 

"Well, not to make you miserable, so I'll change the subject now." 

Angel stopped and leaned on the rail. Far below the amusement pier, the water gave off sparkles. In the sky, clouds flitted past the moon, that was bright despite the lights at their backs, and the glitter of the city shoreline. 

Jem sidled up close to him, laid her elbow beside his. "I'm sorry I put you on the spot, okay? Sometimes I think it would've been nice to be around at a time when people dressed up and went out to dance all the time. I'd have liked that. I'm all wrong for hip hop, I'm more the foxtrot. That's all." 

"Are you wanting a child," Angel said. 

It didn't sound like a question, and for a long moment she couldn't figure out _what_ he'd just said. She blinked, streaming the words back through her head, searching for the sense. 

Angel brushed her fingers with his. She glanced at his hand, and up at his adamantine profile, looking out across the water. At their backs two different pop songs fought with the jingles and electronic pops and taunts of the arcade. 

"A child. I casually mention my mother and you jump straight to--to _that._ " 

"It's been on my mind." 

" _Has_ it?" After a year with him, she should be more prepared to follow the twists of his mind? Jemima tried to think what she might've done or said to give him this idea. 

"Whatever Spike has ... whatever makes him capable of ... that's just him. I'm never going to be able to give you a baby." 

"I'm trying to plumb your secret tango skills, and _you_ \--oh Angel. Are you really worrying about this? Do _you_ want a child? Is that it?" 

He shook his head in denial. "I worry about how long ... how long--" 

"What? How long you can wait before you drive me off for my own good?" She tried to laugh, to say it like it was a joke--it ought to be a joke, but Angel sounded far from playful. 

" _No._ God, no. Jemmie--you know I think all the time about taking care of you. How to be good to you." 

"You are good to me. But you don't have to _take care_ of me, I thought it wasn't like that, I thought we were partners." 

"I want to be. But we'll never be equal. Not like--not even close to--" 

"Angel, I don't want the same things Mamma has. Can't you trust me to tell you how things are, and not to make you guess?" 

Angel turned to her then, and she saw that this simple question wasn't simple to him. 

"When I say 'dance' I mean 'dance'. If I meant 'baby' I'd say 'baby'." 

Angel lifted her up to sit on the rail--it was narrow and slippery, with a long long drop to the water behind, and for a moment she was giddy, but his hands were linked in the small of her back, steadying her. 

And now she was up here, they were face to face, no need for him to crouch or her to crane. 

"You can't be afraid I'm going to change my mind about _you._ " 

His look was so piteously earnest. "Just because you have the visions, doesn't mean you're obligated to stay with me." 

"Do I behave like a person under an obligation?" 

He shook his head sadly. "Time passes." 

"It does." She put a finger to his lips. "I know--but not for you. Not the same way. Not for you, or for my parents. And you think I ought to escape back into the flow of time, but you don't want to send me there, and you don't really want me to decide to go either. But you think one day I'll wake up and be angry at you for drinking up my time." 

"You have a way of putting things--" 

"I'm the daughter of a bad poet." She smiled. 

Angel said, "You'll tell me, when there's anything you want?" 

"Don't I already? I'm always pestering you for this or that." 

"Coaxing me out of my clothes." Not his clothes merely, but his self, the dark thoughts, dark books, he could lose himself in. "Venus and Mars stuff." They called it that, their sexual rituals, their size difference that excited them both. _Pocket Venus,_ he'd nicknamed her. He caught her fluttering hair, wrapped it around his hand. She rested against his other arm, holding her secure from the drop. "That's not what I'm talking about." 

"What then?" she said. 

"Serious things. Don't you think about children? When we first met, you said you'd just had an abortion, you seemed sad about it." 

"Of course it was sad. Everything was sad then. But I don't know about a child. Kitten's a little darling, but I don't feel that _urge_ when I hold her. I'm not going to leave you because you can't give me a child. Are you going to leave me for that reason?" 

"I can never forget that I don't deserve you, I worry that I'm doing wrong, keeping you to myself, but it's too late for me to give you up. I couldn't do it." 

"You couldn't do it," Jemima repeated, the ocean wind swallowing her words. It came to her that her trust in him held a minute gap, like the small metal circlets in a bracelet, that might hold forever, or might catch on something, and pull apart, just far enough for the whole thing to fall away. 

The kind of breach that was nobody's fault.  
  
  


~~~

The closer they got to Los Angeles, the more uneasy William grew. 

It was one thing to keep Buffy from suspecting him, while they were alone together in a hotel suite. And he could probably fool Jemima too--he had all their prior conversations, their ways of interacting, at his fingers' ends, after all, so though he didn't really _know_ her, he'd manage it. 

But Angel. Angelus. There was so much between him and Spike--decades of hatred and desire wrapped in a kinship that made them as intimate as twins. They might be playing now at being friends and allies, members of a family for the sake of the women they loved, but William could feel that this never sat totally smooth for Spike, and for himself, the idea of that beast, souled or not, filled him full of dread. He couldn't bear to think of himself being penetrated by that great brute, and yet the memories bubbled up like sick in the back of the throat. 

He'd never pull it off with him. Never. 

Christ almighty, what was he going to do? He'd have to find some way--fast--to bring Buffy back into his own time. Surely that could be managed somehow, if only he could meet up with the right sort of mage? Even if he could accomplish that, it wouldn't be now, tonight. _Now_ , he wanted to turn the car around and drive off north, or west, just take Buffy off to some new place where no one knew them. 

Not that she'd ever agree to that. He could well imagine how she'd look at him if he proposed it. 

In the back seat, Kitten stirred from her snooze, letting out gentle hoots. There was a rest stop coming up, a quarter mile off; he said they'd stop. Buffy roused herself from her half-doze, smiled at him. "I'll nurse her, and we can stretch our legs." 

There were no other cars there. The lot smelled of gravel and the sea that was just too far off to be visible. Buffy got into the back of the car to attend to the child. He strode off a little way, tasting the air. Brought his hands to his nose--he could still smell the boy he'd taken a few hours ago. Going in to the men's room, William washed his hands over and over with the caustic liquid soap. 

Even so, the scent of that delicious death clung. Would it be on his face, his breath? 

Angelus might--certainly would--smell it there. 

When he returned, Buffy was leaning against the rear of the car, drinking a bottle of water. The baby was once more strapped into her seat. 

He went to her. The wind off the invisible ocean whipped her hair into her face, she kept pushing it back. William caught it, gathered it into his hand. She smiled up at him, an abstracted, wifely look. 

"All right?" 

She nodded. "Kitty's fine." 

Not quite wanting to voice his desire, he stooped to kiss her. Buffy sighed against his mouth, draping an arm lazily on his shoulder. He kissed her a little more; she grew more interested. Then she drew back. "Someone might pull in." 

"There's barely anything on the road." He'd parked at the darkest edge of the lot. 

"Okay. Just a quick one." Scooting up to sit on the trunk, she reached up her skirt to pull off her skimpy panties. "Just try not to wake Kitten, okay?" 

Her aroma and kisses roused him well enough, but it wasn't the fuck he was really after. William mouthed her neck as he went into her. Buffy panted beneath him, her heels diggng into the small of his back. He waited a few moments, finding the rhythm that seemed to please her, before bringing up the fangs, letting her feel them at her throat. She was working hard now, milking him with her inner muscles, gasping into the cool night air. Had she ever been so easily excited when it was only him? For the vampire, she was relentlessly randy. Always at his service. 

When he bit her she arched high, her pulse fluttering, and cried out her pleasure, worries about waking the baby forgotten. 

He drank deep, deliberately sloppy, letting trickles run off onto his hand, coating his lips. Buffy didn't seem to notice; she was grinding herself against him, her head thrown back, grunting and gasping like a woman possessed. 

He only stopped when she fell limp, expelling a strangely gentle laugh on the breeze, and plucking at his ear. "Hey. Hey. Leggo." 

He raised his head. She was beautiful, glassy-eyed, torn, bleeding. Hair stuck to the wound. Her smile faded. "This kinda hurts." She pressed a hand to the bite. 

"Sorry." He hadn't come yet. She registered that. "Oh, there's more." 

He had what he wanted, could be the considerate husband. "Needn't be." He was pulling out, but she stopped him, grabbing onto his belt loops to hold him down. "I want to see you come." Her smile was back, rather tipsy now. Blood-loss making her foggy. "Pretty Spike. Come for me." 

William was pretty sure that the only blood Angel would smell on him would be hers. That would buy a little time. 

Three hours later, when they pulled up in front of the Hyperion an hour ahead of the dawn, he was almost relaxed. "You go on in, sweet, I'll park the car. Wait, I'll help you with the bags." 

He'd opened the trunk, and Buffy was taking Kitten out of the back, when William spotted them, incongruously on foot, Jemima and Angel, coming round the corner slowly arm in arm. 

She saw them at once, and they hastened. "Hello, you're back!" 

"What're you doin' out at this hour?" 

"Sometimes I need to eat a very rare cheeseburger at 4 in the morning. I think I'm turning into a half vampire." The way she smiled up at that low Irish bastard struck William as obscene. How did Spike stand for this? 

"Don't even joke about that," Angel said. 

She shrugged, still smiling. "I keep the hours, anyhow. Welcome back, was it a good weekend?" Her embrace was light and loving; she let him go at once and turned to Buffy. "Mama, hello. How's Kitten?" 

Wlliam and Angel were left for the moment on their own. 

"Weekend went all right?" Angel said. 

"Yeah. All right." 

"Good. Good. Jemmie saw an item in the paper, and she wanted to call, only I--" 

"Look, fancy a pint?" 

"What, now?" Angel glanced up at the sky. 

"There's that after hours place on--you know the one. Can come back through the sewer." 

"Yeah, all right." 

Jemima and Buffy were nearly at the Hyperion door when Angel called out to them. "We're going for a drink." 

They didn't turn. Jemima gave a dismissive wave and then they were inside. 

"Right," William said, "We're off."  
  
  
  


Jemima still wasn't sleepy--secretly she _did_ think she was turning into some sort of demon, what with the visions and the staying up all night. Sometimes Angel seemed to sleep more than she did. But there was always plenty to do. She was still assessing the books in Wesley's collection--it wasn't enough to be familiar with the detailed catalogue he'd made of them, she wanted to be conversant with the contents of each. Sometimes research was all that stood between AI and disaster, so it helped to know what they knew, and Wesley's holdings were vast and deep. There were books in crates that he'd never had a chance to shelve before falling ill; she was trying to make some progress every day with these, on top of everything else. 

She didn't realize she'd dozed over a large compendium of known dimensions until she heard the door knob turn. 

Jemima raised her head, repressing a yawn. 

But the door didn't open. 

She heard her parents arguing in fierce whispers out in the corridor. 

Which didn't prompt her to investigate--they didn't need her poking into their spats--until she heard her mother begin to sob. 

Then she leapt for the door. 

Which flew open at the same time, nearly striking her. Buffy was coming in, even as she was looking around at Spike, hissing, "-- _let me_! Just let me tell her!" 

"Tell me what?" 

Her mother grasped the brass doorknob so tight it buckled in her hand. 

Behind her, her father was paler than usual, brows knitted. 

"Listen, precious--there's bad news." 

"Spike-- _let me_!" 

Jemima stared at them, her heart tripping over itself in its rush to beat. "What? What happened?" 

Buffy disengaged from the doorknob, not so much pushing Jemima back as driving forward into the room, her chin tucked down. She stopped, took a deep breath, and raised her head. Her eyes were large and wet and _glowing_ \--Jemima had seen her look that way before, and it made the breath catch in her throat. 

But before Buffy could speak, Spike caught at her arm, and brought her close to him. "Better just to say it straight out. It's Angel. Angel's--Angel's gone." 

"Gone? Where did he go?" 

"He's dead. He's dusted." 

" _What_? No!" She yanked her arm away, turned to Buffy. Who was sobbing now without restraint. "Mama, stop that! This can't be true! Stop it!" 

"Sweetheart, it is true," Spike said. He took her by the shoulders, but she tore away again. "We were jumped by a gang of vamps, in that alley off Calhoun. Did for most of 'em, but one got the stake away from Angel an' that was that." 

_Not with his own stake!_ She opened her mouth to deny it again, but now she saw that Papa was crying too, the streaking tears showing where his face was dirty--and then she saw how disheveled he was--his shirt torn, bits of mud stuck to the knees of his jeans, and his boots. 

"You ... you couldn't stop it?" 

"Happened too fast. Nothin' could stop it." 

She gasped, and then there was no more air. Buffy caught her as she dropped.  
  


~~~

It took only three pints to make Spike swerving drunk. He'd forgotten so much from his old life, including that William had never learned to hold liquor--and wasn't at all used to beer. He dragged himself away from the pub while he could still walk upright--he had just enough presence of mind to realize that were he to come home crawling, his mother would be terrified, and it wouldn't do to frighten her that way. 

He was a little fuzzy on just which square the house was on, and at this hour and in his condition, the rows of white townhouses he traipsed past all looked alike--he was ready to collapse. 

At least his mother hadn't waited up for him. The man servant let him in--his mere presence was a strong signal of how all William's prospects had changed, and Spike had to fumble for his name. He threw up in the chamberpot and went straight to bed. 

Before dawn he woke, his throat and mouth and nasal passages dry and aching, needing to piss. When he rose he was dizzy, and had to grab the bedpost. 

Spike had long since forgotten how it felt to be ill. Not back-broken-stuck-in-a-wheelchair ill, but head-clogged-throat-raw-compulsively-coughing ill, feverish and puny. By noon he could barely stir from the bed, and his mother was hovering anxiously, directing the servant girl to bring in hot cups of tea, and bowls of hot water so that he could inhale the steam, and soak his feet, and generally be inundated with all that was moist and warm. Spike's head and sinuses ached, but when he asked for aspirin, Mrs Grieves just looked at him oddly. 

_Hasn't bloody been invented yet. Who can keep track?_ Laid up, he was already missing the things he took for granted--what he wouldn't give for the distraction of the telly right now! Instead, his mother brought him his mail, which contained a great many periodicals. He saw his own name on the contents page of some of the reviews. Paging through _Punch_ brought an odd doubling sensation--he _remembered_ the cartoons and some of the stories, and with them recalled where he'd been when he first saw them--holed up with Dru, Darla and Angelus in a commercial hotel in Blackpool, hungry and bored. The weather was foul--sunny and hot all day, then clouding over at dusk to piss down rain all night. Night after night, for long enough that Spike began to think it was a mystical event concocted to drive them insane with ennui. Vampires--at least the Aurelians he knew--were squeamish as cats about hunting in the rain; Spike would've gone out in the downpour anyway, except for Angelus' being in a foul controlling and impenetrable mood that would brook no backtalk or disobedience. Darla was in a temper too--there must've been some scheme the pair of them had planned that was coming to naught--they wouldn't have bothered to fill him in on it. He'd got an aching jaw from going down on Darla for hours while she sulked imperiously in an armchair, thwapping him with her fan whenever he let up or lost the rhythm she preferred, and worse-than-an-ache at the other end from Angelus' angry incursions. Dru was particularly unhappy, and wouldn't be comforted. At one point she set fire to the bed curtains. And in the midst of all that, he'd read and reread this very same issue of _Punch._

_Shit._ Back in his real life, he could feel William stewing, scheming, as he drove Buffy and Kitten back to LA. He didn't want to follow William's train of thought too closely--it was unbearable to be inside it and yet unable to affect it one iota. 

But ill as he was, he kept losing track. Sleep seemed impossible--his nose was horribly stopped up, his throat a rasp. Yet he kept dozing and starting awake again, when the coals in the fire shifted and crackled, or a tradesman shouted in the street, or the maid came in with a fresh bowl of hot water. 

By nightfall he felt worse--he knew, from all the colds and flus he'd seen Jemima and Johnny through that they always got worse at night. Now he couldn't sleep, and in the back of his consciousness was William, walking alone with Angel on a deserted pre-dawn LA street. 

They were just strolling along, the pair of them, chatting. Angel's hands were sunk in his pockets. He mentioned an item Jemima saw in the paper--a corpse on the beach, probable vamp attack, near where they'd been. Had Spike encountered anything up there? Angel had hoped they'd have a peaceful weekend, no interruptions. 

William had dropped back a step, but Angel didn't seem to notice. 

"Was peaceful as doves," William said, as he drove the stake into Angel's back. 

Angel never saw it coming. He fell to dust without even a cry. 

Spike leapt out of bed, ran to the window, threw it open. 

Then stopped. What was the point? He wasn't going to shout into the street, wasn't going to jump out. There was absolutely nothing he could do. 

William had just staked Angel like taking candy from a bloody baby, and now he'd darted into an alley, was rolling around getting himself scuffed up in the muck so it would look like he'd been in a fight. Already the story was forming in his head, what he'd tell the women. _Christ. CHRIST._ Spike slammed the window. His whole body was sore; protesting being thrown so suddenly out of the warm bed. He was in no shape to go anywhere or do anything even if there was any point, which there was not. 

What a stupid pointless end for the Old Man. Surviving all he had, struggling towards the light, only to be stabbed in the back for _nothing._

And Jemmie would be gutted. 

Spike didn't know what to do. 

There was nothing he _could_ do. Trapped and powerless and stuck. 

Spike coughed, his chest rattling, and couldn't stop coughing. His nose and eyes ran, he stooped against the bedpost, and began to cry.  
  


~~~

Days had gone by, though Jemima didn't know how or how many. She woke and thought, _This is the point where I have run out of tears. Perhaps only temporarily? Oh I cannot bear this. I cannot bear this. I would rather cry._

She was lying in their bed, on sheets she had not changed, because they'd made love in them that day, before he'd gone off and left her, and there clung to them at first the aroma of their exertions, and of Angel's cologne, which he'd only begun to wear when she gave it to him as a gift. He barely had a physical odor she could discern--something she was used to about vampires, growing up as she had, but which now that he was no more was another blow in the barrage of griefs--she'd thrown open his closet and buried her face in jacket after jacket, shirt after shirt, and there was almost nothing there. She'd torn some of the things, and trampled them, and screamed, but that was a while ago, and she knew she wouldn't do that again. 

She'd locked the door some time before because she couldn't look anymore at her mother, who was tight-lipped and fierce and distraught, as if it was she who was the widow. And she couldn't see her father, who was the last one to see Angel, who'd come home without him, and who ... who was just somehow not what she needed. When they knocked, which seemed to happen every few hours, or was it minutes, she pleaded to them to go console each other and leave her be. Rita, her friend and Angel's colleague, brought her food, and sometimes she ate it. Rita also was red eyed, but she didn't press. 

Dry mouthed, dry-eyed, her skin somehow two sizes too small as if she'd shrunk in her sleep, Jemima stared up at the ceiling in the near-dark. It might be midnight, it might be noon. She didn't care, it didn't matter. It was all blank now, she was blank. _I would worry, about dying before him. I wasted my energy on worrying about THAT._

When the knock came on the door, she didn't move. 

"Jem, it's Mamma. _Please_ let me in. Just for a few minutes. Please." 

She raised her head from the pillow. " _No._ " 

"Do you know how long you've been shut up in there? If you don't open this door, I'm going to break the lock." 

"Mamma, that's not fair!" This brought her to the door. 

When she opened it, there was Buffy, looking composed and tidy, with Kitten in her arms. "Oh Jemmie. Sweetheart, I thought--I thought maybe you'd like a visit from your baby sister." 

There was something about the way Buffy stood there with the infant, the expression on her face, that Jemima couldn't deflect. "... I would. I would like a visit with Kitty." 

She reached for the child, and then her mother's arm went around her, and her face was buried in Buffy's neck. But she didn't cry. She wished she still could. 

"Maybe ... oh God ... maybe this isn't really the end. When I had to kill him--" 

"Don't talk about that--he wasn't dust then. Don't talk about it for pity's sake!" 

"Okay, okay. Hush. Don't frighten Kitten." 

"I'm not going to share this out with you. This--this part is _mine_." 

"What? What are you saying?" 

"I can never forget that you were the first woman Angel ever loved. You never quite let me forget it, though he did. He always did. But I am the _last_. I am--I am--" Her throat closed around the words she couldn't say, the towering rage that made her want to slap her mother. 

Buffy stepped back. "I understand. I'm sorry Jemmie. I'm not trying to ... to co-opt ...." 

"I can't. I can't. Leave me be. I'm going to close the door now." She pushed the gurgling Kitten back into Buffy's arms. 

"Sweetheart, I know you have to grieve, I know it's so terribly hard. But I wish you'd come out of here for a little bit. It's been days." 

"This is our room. This is _ours._ " 

"Oh Jemmie, I know." 

"Go away now." Jemima shut the door, and locked it again. 

  
  


~~~

"Sir?" The door creaked, and one of the maids put her head round. He'd been lying motionless all morning, unable to breathe except through his mouth, his body a mass of deep aches such as he'd last experienced only after that time at the beginning, when Buffy violated and beat him up, and now it was afternoon. He had no appetite, no energy, couldn't draw other than a shallow breath without going into a spasm of coughing. Anxiety about Jemima and Buffy filled him--he could only watch William's impersonation and wonder how it was that Buffy didn't see through him. 

All this shot through with a dumbstruck awe--William had done what he'd never dared--just did Angel in. Just like that. 

There was a twinge of envy mixed up in his anger and grief. 

"Mister Grieves, sir?" The maid looked in a little further. "if you please, sir, the boy from the Nineteenth Century is here." 

The boy from the Nineteenth Century? Weren't they _all_ from the bloody Nineteenth Century? What was she on about? 

"If you please sir, he says Mr Toffler's compliments and he's sent to bring your manuscript back to the offices now on account of it was meant to be turned in day before yesterday." 

"Manuscript?" That's when he understood. _The Nineteenth Century_. It was a magazine, that William Grieves wrote for. And Toffler was the editor. 

He'd never managed to get a word of his own in print, but this version of himself had never fallen victim to Drusilla. Buffy had rescued him, and he'd gone on to be a slightly other sort of monster. 

" _Christ._ Have him wait in the drawing room." Spike hauled himself up, put on the dressing gown draped over the foot of the bed, and went down to William's study. Maybe the piece was already finished, and he'd be able to hand it over. 

It wasn't until he confronted the desk, with its masses of weighted papers, its piles of unopened mail, uncut journals and pigeon holes half stuffed with chits and notes and letters and tradesmen's bills, and a mess of half unpacked manuscript boxes that must've come back with him from Italy, that Spike got a glimpse of the other part of the deep mess he was in. 

William Grieves had a career. He was a busy writer for the weekly and monthly periodicals. He supported himself, his mother, and this houseful of servants, on what he earned by his busy pen. 

And Spike had no fucking clue how he went about it. Which bits of paper here were actionable, or how urgent. Nor how much money was on hand, or how much was owed here there and everywhere. He didn't even know where the chequebook was. 

How was he going to keep this household on its feet? He shuffled through the piles of manuscript, but nothing struck his bleary eye as looking like a completed piece ready to be turned in. 

He collapsed into the desk chair, and rang the bell. 

The same maid answered it. "Sir? 

"You'd better just tell the boy that I'm laid up with 'flu." 

She nodded and withdrew. He waited to hear the tones of their conversation--the messenger from the magazine seemed disinclined to go away empty handed--and then the closing of the street door before he dragged himself back up to his bed. 

A little while later the same knock sounded on his door, the same maid looked in. 

"I brought you up some beef tea, sir, if you please." 

Spike gestured to her to come in. He hadn't seen this girl before today, but as he looked at her he recognized her from William's memory. She'd been ladies maid to Buffy--they'd traveled back together from Italy. He was keeping her in his employ because he was afraid she knew things that made her dangerous to him. "Kate. You're Kate." 

Her eyes widened. "Sir? You're not feverish are you?" She set the covered bowl down and reached out a hand to feel his forehead. 

Spike caught it. "Not feverish. Of course you're Kate. You were very good to your mistress, weren't you? She rescued you from a vampire, didn't she? And she told you about being a slayer. You helped her." Buffy had told him, after she came back from her Italian sojourn with William, about the little maid who'd been so loyal and protective of her, and hoped that she'd managed to go on to a good life. 

The girl pulled her hand away, and averted her eyes. "I tried to, sir. I am so sorry for her! For her and her precious little babby!" 

"I know you are, Kate. You're a good girl. Tell me something, Kate. Did your mistress ever tell you about Spike?" 

The girl went wide-eyed. "Sir--don't you ask me to say nothin' against mistress! What passes 'twixt a lady an' her maid--that's--that's--just for them." 

"She did tell you." 

"Sir, I'm not to stop here. I brought you this beef tea, an' now I'm to go back to my work." 

"Wait. I need you, Kate. You're the only one I can speak to now. You know about the slayer, and you know magic is real, and she told you about me." 

"About _you,_ Sir?" 

"I'm Spike." 

"Sir! 

He forced himself to smile, to look as pleasant and non-threatening and sane as he could manage. "I know it seems shocking, but please jsut listen to me like a good creature. I'm not William Grieves. I'm Spike, I've been brought here, across time and trapped inside this body. Where I'm from, it's a different time and place, and your mistress and her child are alive and well there. I need to get back to them. Do you understand?" 

"No--Sir!--no--this sounds like madness--!" 

"But you know about me. Buffy told you. I know she did, because when she came back to me, after Italy, she _told_ me about you, good intelligent little Kate, who stood up for her. She told me that she confessed to you who she was, and all the truth of it. Didn't she?" 

"She ... she was very forlorn an' unhappy an' she told me a tale--such a tale!--of a vampire who was quite particular and peculiar .... but--" She was looking at him now with furtive curiosity, out of the sides of her eyes, as if she believed she'd catch him out that way. 

"It was a vengeance demon who did it, she'd known him--Grieves--before an' was fucking with his head all along, but she's pissed off to the continent and now I'm stuck here alone, and if I don't figure out how to put this right I'll never see Buffy again. I'll have to live here and die here and be lost forever, and that thieving bastard will go on in my place!" 

"Sir--do be calm! Missus Grieves has just come in an' she'll be up here directly! You won't want her to hear this, an' she won't want to find me here! I'll lose my place if she finds me here!" 

"No ... no, I'll make sure you don't lose your place. Good Kate. You'll be all right, I promise you. Only be my friend. You're the only one who knows Buffy." 

"Young Missus Grieves my mistress is dead." 

"She isn't really, though. She was brought back to her own time, and she's well. It's too hard to explain, but you can be sure of that. She's well, but she's been tricked by William who's been put into my body, and I've been put here, and there's nothing I can do about it, unless--" 

"Unless what?" 

"Unless I can find Cecily or someone who outranks her, and make her put this right. Will you help me? I need someone I can trust, or else I _will_ go mad." 

"Sir, I can't lose my place. I'm an orphan, if you please, sir." 

"I'll make sure nothing like that happens to you. You'll be paid, and--" Spike thought, what he'd had no occasion to think of for over a century, "--and I'll write you a character, a very good one, that you can keep and use if you need it. How will that be?" 

"I would like to be reunited with my young mistress, Sir." 

"I don't think that will be possible, exactly. But you won't lose by helping me." 

"I hear your mother on the stairs, sir!" 

She was gone, and a moment later the door opened again, and his mother was there, wanting to know how he got on. He tamped down his seeping panic and smiled for her. 

He didn't know how Kate might be able to help him, but just being able to say a word to her about Buffy, about the truth, was a small relief. He grasped from it what he could.  
  
  


  
**End of uncompleted story ******

  



End file.
